In a time when ponderous, navel-gazing attempts at profundity have invaded even the superhero movies of the day, “Boy Kills World” stands apart as an actioner liberatingly unburdened with meaning or cheap sentiment. Instead, it delivers exactly what it says on the tin, a gleeful orgy of violence and blood-letting – wrapped in a stylish and imaginative package. If you’ve ever screamed “Shut up and kill!” at a dilly-dallying, loquacious protagonist, Bill Skarsgård’s spry action hero is your man. He doesn’t speak a word; all he does is kill, racking up a body count north of 100 across an hour and three-quarters. That’s one kill every minute if you are keeping count.
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“Boy Kills World” starts with an admirably uncomplicated premise. Our deaf and mute hero (Bill Skarsgård) is raised by a shaman (“The Raid” star Yayan Ruhian) for one purpose only — to kill supervillain Hilda van der Koy (Famke Janssen). She terrorizes the citizens by running the annual “Culling” show, where her hoodlums slaughter rounded-up victims on live television. But to actually get to Hilda, inside her lair, our unnamed hero will have to dispatch a veritable army of henchmen, including chief henchwoman June 27 (Jessica Rothe), Hilda’s siblings Melanie (Michelle Dockery) & Gideon (Brett Gelman) and Melanie’s husband Glen (Sharlto Copley). Along the way, our hero— credited only as “Boy” — acquires two allies, Basho (Andrew Koji) and Benny (Isaiah Mustafa).
The film, in a welcome move, refrains from explaining anything about its world at all. What time and place it is, what the form of government—is all deemed superfluous to the plot and not bothered with. It’s best to conceive of the film taking place in an alternate timeline, roughly the present day, in a gonzo techno megapolis. The film, shot in Cape Town, has a tremendous, immersive production design, conjuring up a world all its own—and all the more impressive for being original—as it is not adapted from any comic book. Or a video game, for that matter, even though it plays like one.
Boy’s mission to kill Hilda takes the form of a series of skirmishes with different baddies, like the levels of a video game, requiring different weapons and presenting greater difficulty. For all its simplicity, “Boy Kills World” does pull off a pretty neat narrative switcheroo late in the game that completely turns the film over its head and significantly alters the stakes. Think of it as a secret level unlocked after you think you’ve reached the end of the game.
Along the way, several skulls are bashed in, limbs are chopped off, and the human body is treated as a canvas for the visitation of ever more creative injuries. A sequence where Boy picks up a cheese grater as his weapon of choice to butcher a group of baddies will surely bring down the house as it did at its world premiere screening, generating spontaneous audience applause. By the film’s end, so much blood has been spilled that Boy is caked in red from head to toe.
The film maintains a breezy tone throughout, mainly due to the hard-working efforts of Bill Skarsgård. Tall & slender, though impressively shredded, he makes for a creditable leading man and could launch a career as an action hero of this film. His face, hollowed out by the intense dieting and training for the role, has shed not just fat but years, it seems. With his high cheekbones and lantern jaw brought into sharper relief, Skarsgård seems more than a decade younger than his 33 years. His cherubic, almost angelic face — all boyish good looks — foregrounds Boy’s innocence even as he decimates henchmen by the dozen. And his face has to do a lot of heavy lifting in the absence of any dialog. With his interior monologue delivered as voiceover narration, Skarsgård gamely and goofily mugs for the camera, his charisma & screen presence seeing him through.
A lot is asked of him, as the film is one long action sequence from beginning to end, and Skarsgård variously displays proficiency in martial arts, arms combat, and even parkour. With the sheer volume of action scenes on offer, some work better than others. But they generally move along at a nimble pace—often helped by eclectic music choices from a soundtrack that is also likely to be popular. One early fisticuff episode is scored with a Bollywood-like number.
Amid all this mayhem, there are surprisingly juicy roles on offer for women, and the film does pass the Bechdel test, natch. Famke Janssen and especially Michelle Dockery vamp it up with aplomb. And Jessica Rothe, sporting a six-pack to rival Skarsgård’s, gets an equal opportunity to showcase her action chops in several stand-out sequences. Her part gratifyingly also matures from a mere henchwoman to something deeper by the film’s end. Copley & Gelman are hoots as slimy, smarmy sleazeballs. 
Isaiah Mustafa’s Benny is part of a running gag throughout the film. Boy, being deaf, follows conversations exclusively through lip-reading, and we only hear characters say whatever Boy is able to discern. Boy cannot lip-read Benny, and Mustafa’s entire dialog in the film amusingly consists only of gibberish. Boy, in fact, fails to understand the attack plan on Hilda concocted by Benny but goes ahead with it anyway. Action star Andrew Koji from TV’s “Warrior” is cast against type as a comedic character. The filmmakers joked that having Koji in an action role would have overshadowed their leading man. Another action luminary, Yayan Ruhian, from “The Raid” franchise, gets to demonstrate his action bonafides in some particularly brutal fight scenes.
Moritz Mohr, making his directorial debut here, seems destined to be on his way to making a 200 million dollar studio tentpole based on his assured handling of the material here. He finds unusual ways to stage his action scenes, sometimes even deploying a pirouetting drone. James Gunn-like, he also strives to imbue his story with a modicum of emotion. As part of his interior monologue, Boy often chats with the apparition of his dead kid sister (Quinn Copeland)—the only meaningful relationship still driving him.
But that’s plenty. The rest of the time, “Boy Kills World” is a kill-fest peppered with droll gags, like when Skarsgård’s Boy abruptly halts his “Kill Hilda” mission to chomp down on some French macarons. The rationale is that Boy, raised in hard training all his life, has never had a macron before. The exhilaration on Skarsgård’s face also seems to reflect his own dietary deprivation that he went through while preparing for the file. In a canny move, the filmmakers treated the world premiere audience to scrumptious French macarons. Such attention to crafting an experience for cinema-goers augurs well for the movie’s commercial prospects. It seems destined to be a cult favorite, box office hit, or both. Audiences that enjoy the film can also stick around for a post-credits stinger. [B+]
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