Easily one of the most disturbing docs I've seen in a long time. A brutal reminder of the absurd, mindless cruelty that lives in people. If you can make it through this thing without at least wondering if a massive die-off might be such a terrible thing after all, you're a better person than I am.
Not one of these evil bastards has even a shred of remorse for the massacres they and their death squads committed in Indonesia in 1965-66. The attempts to show Anwar Congo as haunted by his deeds fall short; Congo is clearly just dismayed that he has nightmares and can't rid himself of them. Tough shit, asshole -- if there were any such thing as karma in this universe, Congo and the rest of his cohort would be withering away from a slow, agonizing death from eyeball cancer.
Perhaps the most revealing part of the movie is how, when you get right down to it, the Indonesian death squads were not really political. Sure, they wanted to kill commies. But only because the commies wanted to get rid of the Hollywood gangster flicks these criminals enjoyed. Aside from the death squads and genocidal ambitions, it's really like watching a street crew from a mob movie, shaking down merchants for protection money, running for office so as to legitimize their theft, throwing their weight around, siphoning parasitically from the honest labors of others. The commies would have shut down the protection racket, where Suharto recognized that these paramilitary gangs had a constructive use for his own genocidal ambitions.
Movies like The Act of Killing inadvertently provide an explanation for why mainstream dreck packs houses; by the time you're done with this thing, even Grown Ups 3 or Transformers 6 or Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry Puts on a Dress -- Again would be an acceptable palate cleanser.
Fun for the whole family. See it at your own peril.
Not one of these evil bastards has even a shred of remorse for the massacres they and their death squads committed in Indonesia in 1965-66. The attempts to show Anwar Congo as haunted by his deeds fall short; Congo is clearly just dismayed that he has nightmares and can't rid himself of them. Tough shit, asshole -- if there were any such thing as karma in this universe, Congo and the rest of his cohort would be withering away from a slow, agonizing death from eyeball cancer.
Perhaps the most revealing part of the movie is how, when you get right down to it, the Indonesian death squads were not really political. Sure, they wanted to kill commies. But only because the commies wanted to get rid of the Hollywood gangster flicks these criminals enjoyed. Aside from the death squads and genocidal ambitions, it's really like watching a street crew from a mob movie, shaking down merchants for protection money, running for office so as to legitimize their theft, throwing their weight around, siphoning parasitically from the honest labors of others. The commies would have shut down the protection racket, where Suharto recognized that these paramilitary gangs had a constructive use for his own genocidal ambitions.
Movies like The Act of Killing inadvertently provide an explanation for why mainstream dreck packs houses; by the time you're done with this thing, even Grown Ups 3 or Transformers 6 or Tyler Perry's Tyler Perry Puts on a Dress -- Again would be an acceptable palate cleanser.
Fun for the whole family. See it at your own peril.
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