Goddamned Asura [該死的阿修羅] (2022)

Raising similar issues to the recent Terrorizers, this movie is an interesting, if ultimately somewhat flawed, take on the lives of young people in a hyper-modern Taipei. Like the earlier film, it is based around a violent attack (inspired by real-life events), is set in chapters (three in this case) and focuses on an ensemble cast of young characters.

We have the wealthy but emotionally neglected eighteen-year old Jan (Zhan) Wen [Joseph Huang] and his graphic artist friend (and would-be lover) Axing [Devin Pan]. Somewhat older are bored public servant and gamer Hu Sheng [Lai Hao-zhe] and his long-suffering fiancée and advertising executive Vita [Huang Peija]. Then there is the poor Jianlin (aka Linlin or, in the streaming world, Zero) [Wang Yu-zuan] who interacts with Sheng online (where he becomes Shine) and who knows Jan Wen from school. Finally, we have journalist Mold [Mo Tzu-yi] who is writing a story about Linlin’s area but then switches to covering the central activity of the film.

The film opens with phone footage of a gun attack in a central market where various people are shot and one of the main characters is killed. The film then rolls back to explain how we (may have ) got here. This attack is central to about two-third of the movie but then the film shifts perspective to suggest alternative narrative(s).

Like Terrorizers, the film can be seen as a critique of hypermodernity or an argument that an obsession with a digital world can lead to desensitisation and violence. But then bored young men with more money than emotional resources have been seeking to cause problems since at least The Wild One (1953) and Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and it’s not clear (at least to me) that all that much has changed.

The film looks great and the director – Lou Yi-an – links well the different worlds in which the characters live (on and off-line). Acting is excellent from the ensemble cast and the director shows considerable promise (though this is not his first film). But it is the script and structure (written by the director and Singing Chen) which let the film down.

Some of the storylines and symbols – such as the son neglected by his separated parents, the dog in a cage – are rather standard. The film unwisely focuses on the least interesting character: the self-centred and entitled Jan Wen.

And it is never clear what actually happens in the film. It seems inherently unlikely that the shooting incident around which the film is largely based, actually occurred given what we have seen of the gun’s capacity in other scenes. But if if didn’t, where does that leave the ‘alterative reality’ of the final section.

And if, conversely, we accept these two alternatives, is it really credible that whether or not a young man becomes a mass shooter can be determined by ‘blind chance’ in the simplistic manner shown here? Whether or not such cases have occurred, the alternative realities do not come across as particularly credible here

Don’t get me wrong, this film is still well worth watching for the acting, the visuals and the bold intentions, even if they don’t always come off.

The awful English title is a direct translation of the Chinese where perhaps it means something (asura being demigods, celestial spirits or perhaps demons in Buddhism). The film was shown at various festivals in 2021 but was released commercially in Taiwan in 2022. It gets 6.6 on Douban which is about right overall but understates the good points of this movie.