The Act Of Killing (2013)
Average Rating: 8.8/10
Reviews Counted: 104
Fresh: 101 | Rotten: 3
Raw, terrifying, and painfully difficult to watch, The Act of Killing offers a haunting testament to the edifying, confrontational power of documentary cinema.
Average Rating: 8.4/10
Critic Reviews: 29
Fresh: 28 | Rotten: 1
Raw, terrifying, and painfully difficult to watch, The Act of Killing offers a haunting testament to the edifying, confrontational power of documentary cinema.
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Average Rating: 4.3/5
User Ratings: 5,448
Movie Info
Anwar Congo and his friends have been dancing their way through musical numbers, twisting arms in film noir gangster scenes, and galloping across prairies as yodelling cowboys. Their foray into filmmaking is being celebrated in the media and debated on television, even though Anwar Congo and his friends are mass murderers. Medan, Indonesia. When the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, Anwar and his friends were promoted from small-time gangsters who sold movie theatre
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The Act Of Killing Trailer & Photos
All Critics (104) | Top Critics (29) | Fresh (101) | Rotten (3)
This stunning "documentary of the imagination" shows Anwar and other thugs staging scenes of torture and murder for the camera.
Top CriticIn The Act of Killing, director Joshua Oppenheimer pulls off the impossible: He confronts great, incomprehensible evil and puts a human face on it.
Joshua Oppenheimer's documentary interviews leaders of Indonesian death squads responsible for deaths of millions & has them re-enact the killings. The combination of drama therapy and accidental self-exposure - utterly bizarre, unexpected and valuable.
[A] unique and unforgettable documentary.
The acts it describes are shocking, the world it shows is shocking and the filmmaking itself is shocking. This is not a film easily forgotten.
A horrifying yet mesmerizing work, "The Act of Killing" instructively meanders at times as in a Werner Herzog film.
The film is far too long and repetitive, even though it's often gobsmacking in its frank portrayal of these truly nasty, ugly human beings who boast on television about their killings and are ready to keep on killing. Nay, keen to do so
Probably the most horrifying and, at the same time, compelling movie you're likely to see this year. It's difficult to endure, yet impossible not to watch.
Director Joshua Oppenheimer shines a light on one of the 20th century's most under-reported atrocities, but his film, years in the making, is so much more than a straightforward history lesson.
On the one hand, Congo and his pals are pure, unadulterated evil. Yet they all worked in a system which still embraces them to this day, to an ends where everyone agrees the means were justified.
This is a horrifying, unflinching film with Congo serving as the darkest heart of a past that continues to go unpunished and seems ready to repeat itself at any moment.
Oppenheimer captures dozens of shocking, candid moments... My initial reaction was disbelief.
By turning murder into performance, "The Act of Killing" dramatizes the perverted hearts of these men, the twisted mental leaps they needed to feel okay, and even proud, of what they've done.
A powerful look at an Indonesian atrocity
..intentionally keeps comprehension at bay, and therein lies its moral forcefulness.
An odd but riveting film that slowly peels back the veneer of one man's tough-guy image and illustrates the very real psychic toll of murder.
Absolutely shattering.
The film absolutely doesn't glamorize this behavior, and it's staggering the matter-of-fact manner with which some of these killers and corruption advocates speak.
These bizarre images distract from the question at the center of the film: whether it was film-watching itself that carried the seed of all this cruelty.
This film is jaw-dropping. It's a must-see.
The Absurd-Banal-Hideous-O-Meter hits eleven and breaks.
The best documentary to grace U.S. screens in years. It's horrifying, riveting, and even, at times, darkly funny.
The Act of Killing allows the victors a forum to elaborate on their story, and, by their own hands, these aged conquerors unwittingly rewrite aspects of the history that has propped them up for so many decades.
... a fascinating exploration into the ways that guilt can manifest itself ... a mind-boggling two hours.
Audience Reviews for The Act Of Killing
Super Reviewer
With an idea spearheaded by director Joshua Oppenheimer, "The Act of Killing" is a documentary that challenges a few former Indonesian death squad leaders, who are referred to in this film as executioners, but refer to themselves as gangsters and embrace their roles as cold blooded murderers, to re-enact a few of their real-life mass-killings, using whichever cinematic (Hollywood) genre they wish.
Ok, let me give you a tiny bit of historical context. When the first Indonesian president was overthrown in 1965, groups of thugs where recruited to initiate an anti-communist purge, now referred to as the Indonesian killings of 1965-1966, where anyone suspected of being a communist was brutally killed, raped or severely extorted. Today these executioners are seen as war heroes. During the course of this documentary, we look on as Oppenheimer gathers interviews from a few of these renowned former death squad leaders, as they boastfully speak of the creativity behind the different types of mass executions they've conducted and their excitement about re-creating said executions for the big screen.
The most notable of these "former executioners" is a man called Anwar Congo, who also happens to be the founder of a paramilitary and violently anti-communist organization called Pamuda Pancasila; an organization that is openly backed by the Indonesian government. But Anwar is not the most polarizing subject of this film simply because he himself claims to be responsible for personally killing over a thousand people, but more so because he seems to be the only executioner Oppenheimer speaks with, who shows any ounce of regret at all. Obviously bothered by his part in an infamous genocide, and claiming, in his old age, to be suffering from nightmares and hauntings brought on by the souls of the deceased, he seems to agree to partake in this social experiment for different reasons than the rest. While fascinated by the opportunity to dress up as an old fashioned movie gangster (as he claims to be a huge fan of old Hollywood cinema) after a while you get the sense that Anwar is really seeking some kind of morbid closure for the atrocities that he perpetrated and that nobody else around him seemed to recognize or even fully understand.
To read the rest of my review, go to: http://www.examiner.com/review/the-act-of-killing-cruelty-vs-sadism
Follow me on Twitter @moviesmarkus
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Foreign Titles
- The Act of Killing - L'acte de tuer (FR)
