Director: Kelly Dolen
Starring: Jamie Bamber, Lachy Hulme
Distributor: Monster Pictures
Runtime: 90 mins. Reviewed in Oct 2014

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Rating notes: Strong violence and coarse language

To say a film is interesting is not meant to be put-down. If the film is considered interesting, it is stimulating, emotionally involving, giving the audience a challenge and something to reflect on.

It can be said, definitely, that John Doe Vigilantes is interesting, even confronting.

But that is not to say that all audiences will want to have this experience. This is a story, set in Melbourne and using Melbourne and locations effectively, about a serial killer who is called John Doe. When it comes to screen vigilantes, many might remember Charles Bronson in the Death Wish series in the 1970s and 1980s, a man whose family has been violently assaulted and who feels that justice cannot be done by the legal system and so takes the law into his own hands, wreaking vengeance. A more recent example is Denzel Washington in The Equaliser, a seemingly virtuous man, edifying even, who goes to the defence of a young girl and turns into an exterminator of hyper-exploitative gangsters.

The thing is that the audience found these men of vengeance initially sympathetic, and found that what they were doing was righting wrong. John Doe is definitely not sympathetic. His serial killing (some of it shown in harsh or suggested detail, especially the intense confrontation with a brutal childkiller) has as its target criminals who have moved beyond the justice system or those who have served time, been paroled and offend again.

At the opening of the film, the verdict is about to be given in his trial. The screenplay introduces a journalist, played by Lachy Hulme, whom John Doe has allowed to interview him. This gives the audience the opportunity to look at and listen to John Doe, rather phlegmatic as he talks to and listens to the journalist, remembering the various episodes. Within the interview, there are many flashbacks, the first focusing on a paedophile priest, his treatment of a little girl, and he is killing being taped. John Doe tapes many of his killings and forms an alliance with a television interviewer, sending him the tapes for newscasts.

This introduces a theme which is most significant in the film, the role of the media. We have the journalist interviewing John Doe, who goes about his investigative work by interviewing an array of people, the police, psychiatrists, the television journalist, the producer of the program, and some ordinary people in the street. This raises the issue of exploitation by the media and individuals and communities allowing themselves to be manipulated.

By this device, the film-makers are able to introduce all aspects of serial killing and vigilantes killings, for and against, nuances of Justice, difficulties of law enforcement and prison sentences, the role of parole, the different perspectives of the media, exploitative or restricted, and the attitudes of people who want to watch the videos of the killings and those who do not. This means that the audience may be shifting positions all the way through the film, approving, disapproving, being challenged, thining that some episodes might be exploitative or necessary for the message of the film, wondering about their own stances.

The film focuses on several of John Doe’s more than thirty victims, and abusive husband, brutal bouncers at nightclubs, horriblel abusers and killers of children… The point that John Doe makes is that they have escaped the law but deserve to be punished rather than to be kept alive at the taxpayers’ expense.

Another effect is the influence of the vigilante vengeance on the public, demonstrations in favour of the vigilantes, and individuals who set up posses, inflamed by their hate and wreaking Justice, or what they think to be justice, and indulging their vicious passions. The journalist raises the question for John Doe and whether he enjoyed his killing or not.

Lachy Hulme is very good and insistent as the investigative journalist, wondering why he has been chosen – and finding out with something of a shock. Jamie Bamber (British but working extensively on US TV) is intense as John Doe, though given some humane moments in video material with his wife and daughter.

The ending, dramatically speaking, is quite clever, though it will give audiences reason to reflect because it comes so suddenly.

This is a well written and directed film, which is definitely not an entertaining night out, but a contribution to issues about the law, justice, vigilantes.