Film Review: 100% Pure Rage (2025) - Australia
Reviewed by Andrew Chan (Film Critic Circle of Australia)
I rated it 5.5/10
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A Neon-Soaked Scream from the Void That Runs Out of Breath - Gen Z Aussie Director Haruki Ryles' “100% Pure Rage" arrives like a boot to the head from the sunburnt outskirts of Australian cinema. Shot for the price of a used hatchback – a mere $3,000 AUD – it transforms the familiar sprawl of Brisbane and Logan into "The Void," a grimy, neon-drenched dystopia teeming with doomsday prophets and desperate bike couriers. It is a film fueled by raw ambition and Gen Z fervor, an undeniable blast of energy that frequently trips over its own shoestring budget and narrative sprawl. For its sheer, defiant chutzpah, it demands attention. For its execution, it demands patience.
Let’s start by acknowledging the sheer miracle of what Ryles and his collaborators achieve visually. Cinematographer Clancy Ellerman-Miller doesn't just make lemonade from lemons; he spikes it with battery acid and sets it on fire. Using a frantic, "collage-like" editing style and camera techniques that feel both desperate and inspired, they conjure a world that feels genuinely oppressive and otherworldly from Queensland suburbia. This is punk-rock world-building. The action sequences, particularly those featuring the masked avenger Hammertime, land with a surprising, bone-jarring thud. They are chaotic, yes, but possessed of a tangible, visceral weight that puts many higher-budgeted films to shame. The film’s true MVP, however, might be the original score by Nick McDonald and Cole Forfang Phan. It’s a relentless, haunting cyberpunk dirge that provides the film’s most consistent and effective atmosphere, a throbbing electronic nerve holding the chaos together.
Ambition is a wonderful engine, but it needs steering. "100% Pure Rage" careens off the track in its final act. At 119 minutes, it commits the cardinal sin of the scrappy indie: it forgets to be lean. What begins as a breathless, tongue-in-cheek B-movie romp through The Void takes a baffling, mid-sentence turn into ponderous, meta-philosophical drama. The tonal whiplash is severe. The energy that propels the first two acts dissipates like air from a punctured tire, replaced by a self-seriousness the film hasn't earned. The ending, as noted elsewhere, feels less like a culmination and more like an "impressive show reel," cribbing heavily from the visual and thematic playbooks of “Fight Club” and “Fallen Angels” without achieving their resonance. The script's "recursive" elements and extended action beats become exercises in diminishing returns. A ruthless editor could have carved a potent, 80-minute blast of pure adrenaline from this material. Instead, we get a film that, ironically, runs out of rage long before the credits roll.
“100% Pure Rage" is less a fully realized film than a passionate, spittle-flecked manifesto from a new generation of Australian filmmakers. It screams "LOOK WHAT WE CAN DO WITH NOTHING!" And often, what they do is genuinely thrilling, visually inventive, and undeniably cool in that "juvenile-lizard-brain" way. Haruki Ryles announces himself as a director with vision and guts. Yet, the film ultimately buckles under the weight of its own aspirations and a structural bloat that betrays its punk spirit. It’s a flawed, fascinating, frequently frustrating debut – a calling card dripping with promise, but one that feels more like a vibrant sketch than a finished painting. It earns half a star for its sheer audacity and technical scrappiness, another for its visual flair and score, and loses the rest for its narrative collapse and punishing length. I left impressed by the fire in its belly, but exhausted by its inability to sustain the burn. (Neo, 2025)