You know, you meet a movie, you want to like it, the plot is intriguing, you like the director but something is missing... welcome to Impunity. Let's dig in.
Written and directed by Jyoti Mistry, who's collaborated with the likes of Kgafela oa Magogodi (poet) in the past, Mistry’s Impunity is pitched as an examination of our culture of violence in SA. Yet with the trope of the black perpetrator replaced by a good looking white couple ala Natural Born Killers who go on a killing spree.
Things start to unravel when it comes to the why? Why does the couple go on a killing spree? What is the background? What in the past put them on this journey? What set them on this path to begin with? - outside the events that kick-start the story.
Unfortunately Mistry’s movie does not give us a lot to work with. A lot of inference, reading between the lines and overuse of symbolism, that at time feels too much, is what we get. It's very "art housey" pre-the Quentin Tarantino era. Half the time you are left to cobble together the story and plot by yourself.
Viewers will appreciate the amount of naked skin, muscles, Mary Jane and bonking on screen - something we don’t see a lot of in SA films. The two leads Alex McGregor and Bjorn Steinbach are quite decent. It's a pity the story gets weighed down by its themes and a very experimental approach to telling a very straightforward story.
At some points I felt I was re-watching season 2 of True Detective - minus all its redeeming qualities - with its convoluted plot that was actually very straightforward once you knew the end game, too many characters, who I was not truly invested in, but I'm supposed to remember or follow their story.
It gets messy, especially when the B-E-E/comrade sub plot kicks in. Then there’s symbolism that is either too on the nose or goes way over your average film watchers head.
When the movie ended I felt like: is that it? What a pity and there was so many questions still lingering. Poor Desmond Dube and Vaneshran Arumugam are really wasted - there's so much potential drama implicit in these two cops who have to sort out a high profile case with very different motifs driving them. Their drama is not truly realised to its true potential.
Not all is a waste though - there are some great visuals, the soundtrack is cool, the use of archival actual crime footage was refreshing at first, especially when contrasting the bigger violence of Marikana and how it is disregarded by the white populace.
Alas, for a movie about a sexy white couple doing drugs and debaucherous things the film does not blow your mind with excitement as it should. We know as much about the characters in this film at the end as we did at the beginning - which is too little.
Maybe that’s the point, to say violence in SA has no way of being truly understood. Either way this film could have done with a different treatment, but maybe the crowd that love nouveau movies will connect to it better but I really failed to find a connection. Maybe it will turn into cult classic. Who knows.
Rating *1/2
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index
* Junk **Almost bearable ***Now we cooking **** Almost perfect ***** Classic
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