Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Admirable film.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Like most other documentaries about people who are certifiably insane, The Act of Killing raises questions about the exploitation of its subjects. Namely: Is it even possible to exploit men who freely and in some cases gleefully admit to the torture, rape, and murder of untold scores of their countrymen? And also: Why would these people not only want to speak about their guilt but also participate in a film that re-stages their crimes with them in the starring roles?Harrowing, confrontational and surreal, The Act of Killing ends with Anwar Congo, the gangster who murdered nearly 1,000 people in 1965- 66 following the military coup in Indonesia, coming to terms with his heinous crimes. Possibly. He sobs, vomits and laments the lives he had will-fully taken away, and yet we're never sure if he's genuinely repentant or if it's all a high-wire act on his part. But we want to believe that he is; we want to believe that justice is possible; that the killers may one day live through the agony they inflicted on the one million people they butchered. That's the hidden drive behind Joshua Oppenheimer's formally innovative debut feature. Few films have dared to capture the full spectrum of human evil so candidly, so perceptively, as Oppenheimer does in his inconceivable non-fiction epic in which the Texas-born Danish film- maker convinces members of the death squads to reenact their murders in the style of their favourite Hollywood films. The Act of Killing is a piercing, multi-layered study about national amnesia, about the power of self-deceit and the questionable morality of truth-seeking. Its status as the 21st Century's most celebrated documentary will likely be preserved for a long time to come.It is arguable, however, that neither of these venerated directors has made a film quite this unnerving. But then neither has ever tackled a country whose modern history was written by the winners, in blood and in broad daylight. At times, The Act of Killing seems to be unfolding in a parallel, science-fictional universe where self-described thugs are celebrated on talk shows as cultural warriors and keepers of the flame, and their audiences—and their family members—don't bat an eye. (The relatives of victims, meanwhile, are too scared to say anything.) The discombobulating quality is heightened by the re-enactments, which were written, directed, and acted by the film's subjects, self- erected monuments to their perceived righteousness and ruthlessness. Oppenheimer, meanwhile, exhibits patience, guile, opportunism, and, above all, an iron-stomached curiosity about where his subjects' artistic whims and HD-sharp memories will take them (and him) next. The mythologies on display are, to say the least, unique. For all the movies that have been made about murderers (and mass murderers), it's hard to recall one where the participants were freely hanging out in restaurants or tooling around in the streets in convertibles. Usually, killers are shot in the confines of a prison cell or with their features and voices blurred out. Oppenheimer claims that there was very little coercion involved in getting the men in The Act of Killing to talk about whom they were and what they'd done, and as a result the film has a startlingly casual tone. (One wonders if the 159-minute cut, which won the main prize in November at CPH:DOX is quite so brisk; Oppenheimer denies the rumours of an even longer cut.)

The military dictatorships that seized power in Portugal & Greece in the 1960s seem like boy scout picnics compared to the events that followed the military takeover in Indonesia in 1965. But they had many things in common, the main one being the demonization of communism as a political ideology, and the use of the term "communism" as a label to mark out people for persecution in the post-war years when the interests of the national ruling elites were threatened from below. What this film shows very forcefully is how government propaganda disseminated through the mass information & entertainment media in which "communists" are set up as an existential threat to the nation-state, can take such a strong hold on the minds of certain disenfranchised constituent groups among the lower social orders, young and old, that they think nothing of committing the most horrid crimes & atrocities on their neighbors and even on members of their own families, fully convinced that their actions are justified and sanctioned by the state authorities. I think the film, however, doesn't explore this socio-political angle in sufficient detail. Instead it focuses more on the behavioural aspects of the paramilitary groups and pathopsychological tendencies of their members and sponsors, and their cruel and violent treatment of their "communist" victims. Although this makes for gripping and shocking viewing, with a somewhat surreal and bizarre ambiance, as for example, when the former killers now quibble whether their actions were sadistic, or just plain killing, this approach is also somewhat exploitative of the viewer's emotions, as well as the protagonists' present beliefs and views looking back, which to a large extent are not all that surprising. Moreover there is something uncomfortably voyeuristic about listening to them trying to justify what they did in the past, some trying to suppress remorse through expiatory quasi-religious confession of their crimes, while others come across as completely unrepentant with Nietschian clarity.For me, the key to understanding the political background to the events recounted by the protagonists is the telling assessment by one of them in regard to where their fervent anti-communist beliefs and zealous drive to exterminate communists came from, when he says, "The Americans taught us to hate communists." As a final note, while watching this film I couldn't help but recall reading somewhere that Obama's mother, & perhaps Obama too, was stationed in Indonesia at the time of the military coup. Moreover, throughout the film, I couldn't help but notice the uncanny physical resemblance between Congo and Obama himself. Hmm!

I remembering hearing the title of this documentary during awards season, and it was a recent edition to the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die book, and with it being five stars out of five by critics I was hoping for something really good. Basically the film focuses on the Indonesian killings of 1965–66, and challenges the former Indonesian death-squad leaders to reenact their mass-killings in whichever cinematic genres they wish. Anwar Congo, aka the Executioner, and his friends were mass murderers, promoted to small- time gangsters at the time when the government of Indonesia was overthrown by the military in 1965, they helped the army kill more than one million alleged communists, ethnic Chinese and intellectuals in less than a year, Congo himself killed hundreds of people. They reenact their killings in the styles of classic Hollywood crime scenarios, film noir gangster scenes, western and even musical numbers, it is only towards the end that elderly Congo truly realises the viciousness of his past and retches over the though of killing so many innocent people. I will admit firstly that I did not pay the fullest attention to the entire film, I even trailed or dozed off at some point, but I definitely got the gist, where perpetrators to a military coup, who never faced justice, made to recreate their real-life atrocities, and in the process revealing their twisted souls, it is a fascinating enough documentary. It was nominated the Oscar for Best Documentary, Features, and it won the BAFTA for Best Documentary, and it was nominated for Best Film not in the English Language. Good, in my opinion!

Some years ago I met a view relatives of victims of the killings in 65 in Indonesia and I was amazed by the fact that so many people never heard of this genocide that took place. Especially here in the Netherlands where we are still talking about the struggle against the Dutch in the 50s while in 65 one of the largest mass murder took place! This film is not just a documentary but it's a very original way of letting the murderers talk about what they did in those years and how they were caught in participating in these horrific killings. It's like if letting old SS men talk about about their acts in the concentration camps without restrictions or condemnations. Mr Oppenheimer made a brilliant live doc through which people can learn what happened in those years and how this affects contemporary Indonesia. Although the movie depicts a heavy subject, it's quite light to watch even funny sometimes and it gives a very realistic idea seen from the eyes of the killers themselves.