The Act Of Killing

2013

The Act Of Killing

Critics Consensus

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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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 tickets on the black market to death squad leaders. They helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese, and intellectuals in less than a year. As the executioner for the most notorious death squad in his city, Anwar himself killed hundreds of people with his own hands. (c) Official Site

Rating:

NR
Genre:

Documentary, Special Interest
Directed By:

Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn
Written By:

Joshua Oppenheimer
In Theaters:

Jul 19, 2013 limited
On Disc/Streaming:

Dec 3, 2013
Box Office:

$281,592
Runtime:

116 minutes
Studio:

Drafthouse Films

Watch it now

Cast

Anwar Congo

Herman Koto

Sakhyan Asmara

Ibrahim Sinik

Adi Zulkadry

Safit Pardede

Syamsul Arifin

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Critic Reviews for The Act Of Killing

All Critics (151) | Top Critics (42)

The Act of Killing is the only 100% original work of cinema to come out this year.

Feb 21, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Scott Marks
San Diego Reader
Top Critic
If Oppenheimer's aim is to question and investigate what life the past has in the present, he has succeeded in a staggeringly original way.

Jan 3, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Dave Calhoun
Time Out
Top Critic
The originality of The Act of Killing lies in Oppenheimer's decision to treat artifice as a roundabout path to truth.

Dec 16, 2013 | Rating: 3.5/5 | Full Review…

Jake Wilson
Sydney Morning Herald
Top Critic
Bizarre, hypnotic, audacious.

Dec 16, 2013 | Rating: 3.5/4 | Full Review…

James Adams
Globe and Mail
Top Critic
The emotional places this troubling movie takes him to are rewardingly primal and potent, forcing both subject and viewer to wrestle with internal demons.

Dec 16, 2013 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

Keith Uhlich
Time Out
Top Critic
I certainly do not move that the film should be suppressed, only that one should know what it is. It is a bath in a smiling madness.

Nov 14, 2013 | Full Review…

Stanley Kauffmann
The New Republic
Top Critic
Soaked in blood and haunted by ghosts, The Act of Killing is not an easy watch at all. But it is an incredibly rewarding one; this truly is cinema at its most important.

Jun 7, 2019 | Rating: 4/5 | Full Review…

Christopher Preston
One Room With A View
One of the great, unique, often intangible and sometimes scary potentials of the film medium is the way that cinematic artifice can achieve something more profound than mere fact.

Apr 19, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Daniel Barnes
Dare Daniel
A disturbingly comfortable voyage into the mindset of evil and the psychology of a murderer(s), Oppenheimer's film is like nothing you'll have ever seen before.

Feb 25, 2019 | Rating: 5/5 | Full Review…

Patrick Gamble
CineVue
Beyond this intellectual actualisation, I can't help but think that the film falls short of its supposed brilliance. Surely watching socially or politically charged documentaries should achieve something more than cognition!

Jan 7, 2019 | Full Review…

Tara Judah
Overland
To take Anwar's own dramatic projection of his gradual humanisation seems a much more murky and less conclusive process than Oppenheimer wants to tidily present us with.

Dec 16, 2018 | Rating: 2/5 | Full Review…

PJ Nabarro
Patrick Nabarro
It all makes sense when you submit yourself to Oppenheimer's bizarre, tragic, and eye-opening experiment.

Nov 28, 2018 | Full Review…

Thrillist Entertainment Staff
Thrillist

View All Critic Reviews (151)

Audience Reviews for The Act Of Killing

Oct 04, 2015

I think this would be called a Danish mondo film.Oppenheimer travelled to Indonesia to do a documentary on the Indonesian Killings where national socialists were killing communists and the Chinese for the sake of "unity" and "social justice." The Indonesian state hired thugs to carry these tasks out and this is a dramatization of what happened in the past as well as the the reign of terror being continued in the present. If this film doesn't bore you to death, you are not viewing it right. It's scary to see how the Indonesians idolized these gangsters with weird definitions (free man) as well as the celebration of violence as a justification of whatever means to achieve their fascist end. All I can say is, don't waste your time on this documentary with its twisted agenda or you will end up like me wanting to simply annihilate the God forsaken Indonesia as a whole.

Sylvester K Super Reviewer
May 27, 2014

Documentarians ask the leaders of Indonesian death squads to reenact their crimes. There are some incredibly absurd moments in the reenactments of various fifty-year-old murders, including one of the henchmen dressing up in drag for no discernible reason. But the heart of this documentary is compelling the film's primary subject to face his own flagging, ignored conscience. It takes a while, and there are blithe pronouncements about death and killing that make one's stomach turn, but the film eventually pays off. Overall, the gimmick of the film, the reenactments, seems a little weird, but the premise is still compelling.

Jim H Super Reviewer
Mar 29, 2014

These may be the most absurd two hours of film I'll ever see. Though this documentary follows many mass murderers as they set out to make a movie boasting about their genocidal slaughters, it focuses in on Anwar Congo. Among these killers, Anwar made the biggest name for himself with his apathy and creativity. At the beginning of the documentary, he upholds his image as an untouchable, joyful and easy-going celebrity "free man." With a smile and tools in hand, he casually recalls and demonstrates his methods. Over the course of these two hours however, his internal transformation is the only thing that will make any sense. The footage here is astounding, and raises an overwhelming amount of questions about Indonesia's history and it's current state, as well as America and the UK's own culpability.

Matthew S Super Reviewer
Mar 04, 2014

If I say it's shocking, that's be a gross understatement. What unfurls before your eyes is freaking unbelievable. There are dozens of times when I went what the F did I just hear. Yet another stunning demonstration of the power of documentary cinema.

Anoop K Super Reviewer