Nomura lives in Tokyo. He is a charming and wealthy man with a hobby of torturing and killing young girls under the watchful eye of his cameras. The videos, posted on the internet, are watched by Bayu, a journalist from Jakarta whose work and love life seem to be going downhill. The latter, driven by a desire for revenge, will almost unconsciously find himself emulating the sadistic killer, until the paths of the two dangerously cross.
Five years after his debut ("Macabre") the Mo Brothers tackle their second feature film, not before participating in notable projects such as "ABCs of Death" with the short film "L is for Libido" and "V/H/S 2," co-directing the excellent "Safe Evans" together with Gareth Evans. The latter participates in the creation of "Killers" as a producer: a group that gives hope for the successful outcome of the film.
The directors create an extremely ambitious and complex work, difficult to categorize and with many nuances. The duo manages to craft a work that goes beyond the usual schemes, aesthetically very careful and refined but lacking in narrative terms. The film, despite overflowing with ideas, does not have a precise identity and seems to be more of a mixture of genres that risks ending in anonymity. The ideas are many and interesting but what is missing is the secret ingredient to act as a binder: there is the snuff element, the torture porn, the psychological thriller and even - in the background - a reference to Eastern gangster movies, with all the clichés that derive from it.
The story revolves around the two figures of the protagonists, apparently different but united by the same distorted way of perceiving reality. Far apart geographically but close thanks to the network and the subtle and perverse pleasure that suffering and the death of other people procure. The journalist, obsessed with a local mafioso and with his family in shambles, lets himself be carried away in a vicious circle of dangerous emulation, slipping into an abyss made no less infernal by the patina of justice that he would like to confer on his actions. If Nomura - a kind of Patrick Bateman of the Rising Sun - is a ruthless butcher who acts with disarming lucidity exclusively to satisfy a carnal need, Bayu begins his career as a killer in the guise of the victim, transforming into a executioner driven by a sense of personal and social revenge. The relationship that is established between the two is similar to that between master and apprentice, bordering on plagiarism: the stories of the characters, although they travel in parallel, are united by a thin thread, perhaps too much to justify the enormous influence that one seems to have on the other. The Indonesian duo is nevertheless skilled in staging the behavioral change of Bayu, who lives his new "passion" in a tragic and dramatic way, unlike Nomura, a more static but at the same time ambiguous character, behind whose emotional coldness hides a doomed family past.
The main flaws of the film are found especially in the fragmented and not very homogeneous screenplay. The overall runtime (a full 137 minutes) only accentuates the excessive narrative dilation and, despite the two and a half hours, the film never seems to take a clear direction, leaving an annoying feeling of incompleteness. The rhythm of the story also suffers from this approximation: it is a continuous repetition of similar situations not always functional to the development of the plot.
Apart from some CGI flaws, the most gruesome sequences benefit from excellent technical rendering, thanks also to the support of a splendid and polished photography and an elegant and delicate soundtrack. The most shocking and crude scenes seem, however, almost an end in themselves because they poorly fit into the narrative context: one thus has the impression of seeing instant snapshots of violence that appear and disappear quickly without managing to imprint themselves in the memory or create any sense of disturbance to the spectator.
The Mo Brothers have perhaps dared too much, as they say, putting too much meat on the fire. The final result is a formally perfect film that nevertheless gets lost in avoidable lengthiness and addresses the central theme - that of the potentially harmful influence of the images that the internet daily vomits on us - with excessive superficiality.
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