Kill List and the Drums of War: A Movie Review

Director: Ben Wheatley.

Writers: Ben Wheatley, Amy Jump.

Cast: Neil Maskell, MyAnna Buring, Michael Smiley and Harry Simpson.

One of the greatest flaws in the building of civilization is the human beast. Can we rise from certain primal instincts? Just what kind of atrocities can a man commit on another? With Kill List, several ideas are being mixed into a cocktail. What comes out is a slow reveal of who Jay (Neil Maskell) really is.

After the war in Iraq, he’s returned to civilian life and, true to today’s times for a lower-middle class family, he is struggling to make ends meet. He has a wife and son, and while audiences do not see him as having emotional scars, a good part of the film focuses on exploring his well-being.

The scars simply do not reveal themselves until much later; they are both figurative and real. This movie looks into the Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad's book must have been an influence in this product because of how the narrative is broken up. There are three chapters, and each of them delves into what Jay has to confront.

During this film, the individuals Jay has to kill represent more than just a role; they are allegories to vestiges of what man has to attain to achieve culture. Two victims, the Priest and Librarian, are just rungs in the ladder.

But which direction is Jay going? It’s obviously down, and he’s taking his slow time at entering the belly of the beast. His partner, Gal (Michael Smiley) is not really holding this ladder, and his wife, Shel (MyAnna Buring) is a wild card. She’s hardly an angel and might be representative of Eve holding the apple out to Adam. These two most likely met and were engaged during the war, and very little detail is given about their operation in Kiev to reveal how it impacts their civilian life. This trio of actors play well off one another, and when the credits reveal that the entire cast contributed to the dialogue as well, the spontaneity of their contribution comes off as very believable.

Even though that may have been hell for video editor Robin Hill, he did an excellent job of putting the story together. While most of this film was deliberately slow paced, he introduces new elements into the product so the build-up to the Hammer Films style product is not all together surprising. Not many viewers may appreciate that. Either they have finally tasted the sweet spot of that drink, or it’s just sour.

For Jay, only one Spanish proverb comes to mind: "it's the grinding of his teeth that awakes the blacksmith's dog, not the noise of the hammer." In what has awoken in Jay is only a terror that even he cannot fathom. The drums of war are loud.

Overall: 6 out of 10.

The film's homepage is here:

The Kill List Homepage

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Posted in: 2011,2011 release,dramatic thriller,iraq,movie poster,movie review