In the 70s and 80s, martial arts champ Steve Chase (played by James Ryan) took down scores of baddies in “Kill or Be Killed” and “Kill and Kill Again.” In essence, co-writer and director Moritz Mohr captures the spirit of those B-action films for the dystopian smash-bang-beat-’em-up thriller “Boy Kills World” starring Bill Skarsgård as the titular hero in a world that resembles a video game rated M for mature audiences. It’s violent, bloody, and humorous, with a welcomed Famke Janssen as the villain, Sharlto Copley looking like Christopher Lee, and Jessica Rothe in a hold-my-beer third act that resembles an impossible boss battle.
Reminiscent of “The Hunger Games,” the apocalyptic story begins with The Culling, an annual televised event where totalitarian ruler Hilda Van Der Koy (Famke Janssen) decides who bites the bullet for being a criminal. Director Mohr doesn’t hold back, as kids also pay the ultimate price for their father’s sins. The film flashes back to the childhood of our hero, Boy (Cameron Crovetti), whose mother and little sister, Mina (Quinn Copeland), are murdered during the show while he’s left for dead.
Rescued and nurtured back to health by a jungle shaman (Yayan Ruhian of “The Raid” films) who becomes Boy’s mentor, the young child grows up to be a fighting machine who vows revenge against the Van Der Koys.
Bill Skarsgård plays the grown-up Boy. He’s deaf, mute, and serves as the story’s narrator thanks to his inner voice (the great voice-over actor H. Jon Benjamin from “Bob’s Burgers” and “Archer”), which amps up the comedy thanks to Benjamin’s over-enunciated aggressive tone. You may feel like a lurker on Twitch as the film begins to resemble a video game. The premise for the over-the-top narration is Boy can’t remember what his actual voice sounds like, so he mimics the voice from his favorite arcade game, Super Dragon Punch Force 3.
The supporting cast of Van Der Koys includes Sharlto Copley as Hilda’s bumbling husband Glen, host of “The Culling,” Michelle Dockery (“Downton Abbey”) as conniving sister Melanie, a funny Brett Gelman as brother Gideon, the strongarm of the family who fancies himself a brilliant poet, and Jessica Rothe as the Van Der Koy’s fierce soldier June27 who wears a high-tech helmet with a digital billboard as a visor. Rothe shines in the film’s third-act finale.
On Boy’s team, we get resistance fighter Basho (Andrew Koji) and his partner Bennie, played by Isaiah Mustafa (“It Chapter Two”), who mumbles incoherent gibberish with amusing results.
We also get a fight scene with Ruhian’s jungle shaman, and it’s worth the wait, but Mohr doesn’t know when to quit, so you may scream out, “C’mon, just die already!”
Dawid Szatarski choreographs the film’s “John Wick”-style action sequences incorporating various forms of martial arts. The frenzied pace of the film (think “Hardcore Henry”) is interspersed with several dazzling slow-motion moments. It’s thrilling for the first hour, but it feels tedious by the film’s end.
By far, “Boy Kills World” will go down as the most violent film of 2024, maybe the decade, as the cartoonish mayhem involves severed limbs, smashed faces, shootings, stabbings, and a grueling-to-watch anti-Olive Garden cheese grater scene heightened by Boy’s inability to suggest “Tell me when to stop.”
(2 ½ stars)
Now showing in theaters
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