Killers is available on VOD & in limited theaters starting Jan. 23rd from Well Go USA
Nomura Shuhei has women issues. He also seems to have daddy issues, mommy issues, and sister issues (okay, he REALLY has sister issues), so he regularly brutally murders mostly innocent women, films the act on multiple cameras, and uploads completed videos to a Youtube-like website. Bayu Aditya is a journalist obsessed with bringing justice to an allegedly corrupt politician. He is also apparently a little screwy. After he posts a video on the same site of a couple of dead robbers he killed in self-defense, Nomura contacts him via the chat feature on their shared death-vlog and killings begin to escalate in both their lives. Through the course of the film, they each make countless insane, or completely stupid decisions, and for some reason, we are supposed to care about what happens to both of these morons.
This movie seems to be shooting for some gritty-gritty realism. Even its grit is gritty. Shaky handheld camera work, dim and dull florescent lighting, and loads of filth populate every frame of the film. The violence isn’t particularly stylish, and there is no other feature suggesting these events couldn’t be happening in the real world. So, where the hell are the cops?
Among the movie’s many problems, both of the main characters are constantly getting away with… well, murder; without any threat of law enforcement. Those two robbers Bayu killed? As far as we know, he left the crime scene intact, somewhere in the inner city, for anyone to find. He posts a video from his home computer where the faces of his attackers are clearly visible (on a website with so much traffic, the media is talking about it), and no one tracks him down to ask him about it!? A serial killer found him, and even mentioned that he should have used a different IP address, so what would have stopped the police? Wouldn’t these videos at least be removed well before they reached millions of views? The police do appear at one point, so we at least know they are around. The illogic only compounds from there. Bayu easily escapes 20 of the previously mentioned politician’s security guards without fighting. All women seem incapable of fighting at all, or leaving when they are obviously in danger, or making one single good decision. None of that is so irritating as the movie’s persistence in nagging us to empathize with these horrible people.
Multiple scenes feature Nomura haunted by his past and the loss of his sister. Oh, he is in such anguishy anguish, the poor thing. Yeah, I get it now… I just don’t understand him. He had a hard life. His life was so hard, that now he has to slam the handle of a baseball bat into a woman’s mouth until she dies, record it, and put it on the Internet. Life in this big, crazy world did this to him.
Things aren’t much better for Bayu. He murdered that mean old politician’s son, allowed himself to be recognized by his security, and doesn’t think for one instant to maybe let his family know they might be in danger, or that they shouldn’t come around his place? He does go over to his ex-wife’s house and yell at her, and beat up her boyfriend. Then he has a lot of anguish and crying… a lot.
The film is not entirely without a sense of irony. In the climactic scene, some big ideas come into play, and that is all fairly thought provoking, but the idea that we should sympathize with anyone in this film is ludicrous. Sure, life is a pain and the world might be a chaotic shithole, as the script slightly more poetically suggests, but if that is the case, why should we waste any of it caring for truly careless people.
