It should not be overstated that the film has any real political or social connotations, and the director did not even specify which African country it was in the film. Child soldiers are not only found in Africa, but also in Southeast Asian countries. Germany also sent teenagers to the battlefield during World War II. Observing and reflecting on the moral implications of the killing of minors with guns is not the success of this film, nor is it actually the focus of this film. This film is a commercial film through and through, violence is the selling point, and juvenile is a gimmick.
The French director's few feature films, "Johnny Mad Dog" in 2008, "Punk" in 2012, and "Messenger from Purgatory" in 2017, are all violent. The stories all take place outside the mainstream social rules, and the protagonists are all marginalized people. This kind of background and characters give the film a reasonable space for extreme violence. What the director strives for in the film is also the audiovisual presentation of violence.
All commercial elements can be seen in "Johnny Mad Dog", and the story is also standard typed. The unscrupulous Johnny kills all the way, encounters the kind and brave girl in pink, and slowly paved the way for the confusing emotional line, and the final ending gives all romantic expectations a punch. The girl in the wedding dress and the boy with a pair of wings in the killing party are not much metaphors, just add a more bizarre visual effect to the killing party.
This director is a director to watch. His films pursue high sensory stimulation, which is undoubtedly an extreme rebellion against the French author's film tradition. From these few works alone, it can be seen that he is almost an outlier in the French film industry. If he is an American director, with these several works testing the waters, what awaits him is likely to be commercial success and the favor of blockbusters. As a French director, he can only obtain extremely low production funds and fight hard in a highly snob market. Successful people are always born at the right time by accident, and unsuccessful people are always struggling in the wrong time and space.
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