Piers Norton

This film presupposes the audience understands the abhorrent nature of killing. This film makes no direct account for the victims, it is called 'The Act Of Killing' for a reason, but it nevertheless manages to tell the unspeakable cruelty of the prejudice they were subjected to. It points an impassive lens at the killers as they try to polish the exposition of their bloodied and vain glorious youth. The lack of 'moral judgement' in the film making style only makes the revelations more shocking, not less, it draws the protagonists out, exposing their arrogance and fathomless callousness. You watch the masks they have made for themselves shift and slip, as they try to reconcile their conflicting accounts and conscience into a coherent moral narrative. The slow deflation of Anwar from the pimp strutting hoodlum of his youth to a wretching shell, as the horrific nature of his deeds consumes him is one of the most startling and honest views into a soul I have seen. This is one of the most affecting films I have ever witnessed. PS. I was driven to write this after reading the Christian Science Monitor review for it in 2013 (it was scraped by Plex) by Peter Rainer. In it he is absolutely damning of it because it does not take an overt moral stance. I found his position even more shocking than the film. It exposed the religious dogma that people have no moral compass of their own unless provided, by a narrator or preacher.