Headshot (2011) - Pen-ek Ratanaruang

​Action movie sensibilities are employed to examine the corrosive effects of late capitalism in Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Headshot, a film which features a consistent and incendiary cynicism about the state of the world in this current epoch.  The high concept conceit of the story - a cop turned hitman who sees upside down after a near death experience - isn't particular important to the film's narrative or stylistic sensibilities, yet it is paramount as a symbolic device to question the state of humanity in which the powerful subjugates the weak on a transnational level.  Through the main protagonists ability to quite literally see the world from another point of view, Headshot enunciates the tenuous entanglements between the state and global capital, revealing through its action schematics a world of corruption which offers little recourse for the many being subjugated by the few.  While it is all a bit heavy handed at times, Pen-Ek Ratanaraung's elliptical narrative intrigues and engages from start-to-finish, embedded with a meditative Buddhist-inspired mythos which questions the nature of justice and morality in a corrupt system where the ruling class represses descent both implicitly and explicitly.  Contemplative about the nature of justice - a largely human construct - Headshot exudes a cynical perspective in the end while detailing the injustices which are common place in the modern epoch. The visceral action is sure enough to entertain those looking for mere escapism, but what lurks in Headshot's rather blunt thematic construction is a polemic display of injustice and a nihilism towards any optimism towards  progress under this political-economic system.