'Boy Kills World' review: Awesome action, but…
If you buy a ticket purely to experience the action scenes of Boy Kills World, you might get your money's worth. They're spread out at irregular intervals, but they're usually a treat. One of them even features Yayan Ruhian, aka Mad Dog from The Raid, one of the defining action movies of the 21st century. This buys the film — which stars IT's Bill Skarsgård and boasts horror legend Sam Raimi as a producer — some fleeting credibility, if nothing more. Yet there's no getting around the fact that Boy Kills World can be a difficult watch.
The fights, drawn from the deep well of Southeast Asian action cinema, are generally shot and choreographed with expertise. However, getting to them requires sitting through an amateurish dystopian comedy-drama with flimsy political wallpapering. There's a stark difference between what debuting director and co-writer Moritz Mohr brings to the table and the flourishes provided by stunt coordinator and second unit director Dawid Szatarski. The result is two wildly disparate approaches being smashed together with reckless abandon.
Only one of these stylistic halves really works, and without the foundation of the other in place, Boy Kills World seldom stands on its own. The brutal, tongue-in-cheek action scenes are a roller coaster, but Mohr's beats of drama, dialogue, and even comedy repeatedly bring this ride to a jarring halt.
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