Yayan Ruhian Archives – CULTURE MIX

January 12, 2026

by Carla Hay

Shogen in “Lone Samurai” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

Directed by Josh C. Waller

Japanese with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Japan, in 1281, the action film “Lone Samurai” features an all-Asian cast of characters portraying Japanese citizens and tribe of cannibals.

Culture Clash: A samurai, who is the sole survivor, gets stranded on an island inhabited by an all-male tribe of cannibals who want to kill him.

Culture Audience: “Lone Samurai” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of predictable samurai movies that are more style over substance.

Yayan Ruhian in “Lone Samurai” (Photo courtesy of Well Go USA)

More tedious than it needed to be, “Lone Samurai” is an utterly predictable dud about a samurai stranded on an island with cannibals who want to kill him. The unrealistic fight scenes have adequate choreography, but the movie is idiotic. “Lone Samurai” is only 95 minutes long, but it seems like longer because there’s really not much to the shallow characters or the very thin plot, which drags with repetition.

Written and directed by Josh C. Waller, “Lone Samurai” takes place in 1281 in Japan, where the movie was filmed on location. Many of the characters do not have real names in the movie, so this review will identify the characters with how they are listed in the film’s end credits. The ship that crashes during a storm is filled with samurai sent by Kublai Khan (the first emperor of China’s Mongol-led Yuan dynasty) to invade Japan and massacre people. You won’t learn anything meaningful about these characters except finding out who lives and who dies.

“Lone Samurai” (which doesn’t have much dialogue) begins with the shipwreck that leaves a samurai named Riku (played by Shogen) as the sole survivor. He wakes up on the beach of an island and finds that a long wooden stake, presumably a beam from the ship, is embedded in his right leg. Riku manages to pull it out. In real life, this type of injury would get infected because it’s left untreated with no medicine. But magically, by the middle of the movie, Riku is fighting as if this injury never existed.

Riku is captured by an all-male cannibal tribe, which does occult rituals. The tribe has a tendency to wear full-face masks, and is led by an elderly chief (played by Yayu Unru), who doesn’t show up until near the end of the movie. The person in charge of most of the dirty work is a sadistic shaman type who is identified as Witch (played by Yayan Ruhian) in the end credits. Witch’s main sidekicks are named Boar (played by Rama Ramadhan Ruswadi) and Bone Thin (played by Faisal Rachman), who don’t have any personalities beyond grunting, growling and yelling.

There is no explanation for why there are only men in this tribe. The only woman seen in the movie is Riku’s wife Ahmya (played by Sumire Ashina), who appears in the occasional hallucinations that Shaman has during his ordeal. Ahmya doesn’t speak and is shown as a smiling, romantic figure who looks at Riku lovingly as she strolls through a wooded area.

Riku mentions having a family and says that he misses them. He hallucinates seeing two boys (approximately 6 to 9 years old) named Kitaro (played by Keigo Sunagawa) and Yoshi (played by Yuma Sunagawa), who are presumably Riku’s two sons. The movie never reveals who these boys are, but Riku seems to know them well. These fleeting glimpses are the very limited extent that the movie shows anything about Riku’s personal life.

Riku is held captive in a cave, where brutal cannibalism occurs with two other prisoners. One of the captives is middle-aged and bald (played by Deden Muhamad Yusup). The other captive is a young man named Putri (played by Fatih Unru). The movie tells absolutely nothing about these other two captives except that they are tortured by dismemberment before their final, inevitable fate. Somehow, Riku doesn’t get this type of torture.

“Lone Samurai” is the type of action flick where the “hero” is surrounded by at least 30 opponents, who don’t attack him all at once (which would happen in real life) but just stand around and wait their turn to do battle with him. It contradicts how vicious these cannibals are with other captives. Viewers are supposed to believe the cannibals pull their punches because there’s this message written in the beach’s sand: “Beware of the Samurai Pirates.”

In other words, there’s no suspense on how this awful movie is going to end. “Lone Samurai” refuses to reveal anything substantial about any of the characters. There is no reason given for why these cannibals exist and why there are no females who live among them. It’s a very long slog to the movie’s big showdown scenes, which are not that fun to watch because everything looks so phony and the characters have blank personalities.

Well Go USA released “Lone Samurai” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on December 12, 2025. The movie will be released on DVD, Blu-ray and 4K Ultra HD on March 17, 2026.

April 21, 2024

by Carla Hay

“Boy Kills World”

Directed by Moritz Mohr

Culture Representation: Taking place in an unnamed dystopian society, the action film “Boy Kills World” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people and Asian) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A deaf and mute man, who was raised as an orphan and trained to be a warrior by a shaman, goes on a revenge mission against the tyrannical dictator whom he blames for killing his family.

Culture Audience: “Boy Kills World” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of videogame-styled action movies that have some offbeat comedy and don’t take themselves too seriously.

Famke Janssen in “Boy Kills World” (Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions)

“Boy Kills World” is a cartoonishly violent revenge flick with touches of psychedelia and self-deprecating comedy in a dystopian society. The story drags with repetition in the middle of the movie, but a plot twist makes up for this occasional banality. This plot twist is not as predictable as another plot twist that happens around the same time.

Directed by Moritz Mohr, “Boy Kills World” was written by Tyler Burton Smith and Arend Remmers. “Boy Kills World” had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. The movie is based on director Mohr’s unreleased short film “Boy Kills World,” which has a similar concept.

In the feature-length “Boy Kills World,” which takes place in an unnamed dystopian society, a young man whose name is listed in the credits Boy (played by Bill Skarsgård) goes on a revenge mission against a tyrannical dictator named Beatrice Van Der Koy (played by Famke Janssen), whom he blames for murdering his mother (played by Rolanda Marais), his father (played by Ashley Dowds) and Boy’s younger sister Mina (played by Quinn Copeland) when Boy was about 13 or 14 years old and when Mina was about 9 or 10 years old. The teenage Boy is played by twins Cameron Crovetti and Nicholas Crovetti. Beatrice is the leader of the Van Der Koy family, who have several members who also abuse their positions of power to intimidate and kill people.

Every year, this bleak society has a mass murder event called the Culling, where Beatrice orders the military to go after enemies and kill innocent people on live TV. Boy’s family got caught in the Culling crossfire. Flashbacks show that he witnessed his mother’s murder. Boy was able to escape but became deaf and mute from the attack. He was rescued and taken to a remote wooded area by a mystic whose name is listed in the credits as Shaman (played by Yayan Ruhian), who raised him in isolation and trained Boy to become a warrior skilled in martial arts.

Boy does not talk out loud in the movie, so his inner thoughts are heard with the voice that he says was the voice of his favorite video game character. (H. Jon Benjamin does Boy’s voice in the movie.) Talent Digital Art has a free-to-play 2.5D fighting video game titled “Super Dragon Punch Force 3,” which is described in a press release as a “real world sequel inspired by the fictitious 2D fighting game franchise” depicted in “Boy Kills World.”) Even in the flashback scenes where Boy is literally a boy, his voiceover is that of an adult man.

Boy’s inner thoughts show that he can be self-deprecating and frequently sarcastic. Boy says of the city that he left behind when he was rescued by Shaman: “This was never a great city. Hilda Vander Koy took it from us. She has a list of all of her enemies. If you’re on it, she’ll find you.” Boy adds, “Hilda took everything from me. And when I become the ultimate warrior, I’ll return the favor.”

Several scenes in “Boy Kills World” show that part of Shaman’s training includes blowing smoke from a hallucinogenic substance into Boy’s face. As a result, Boy often has psychedelic hallucinations. Boy says early on in the movie that there’s a state of being between reality and dreams. The visual effects for the psychedelia are among the more memorable aspects about this sensory overload film.

Boy frequently has visions of Mina appearing to him and talking to him and looking the same way since the last time he saw her. Boy and Mina had a very close and fun-loving relationship before their lives were torn apart. Even in his life as a vengeful warrior, Boy still gets teased and playful scolding from Mina, whom he sees as the only person in his life who truly made him happy.

During his vendetta quest, Boy encounters other members of the Van Der Koy family, including Hilda’s ruthless sister Melanie Van Der Koy (played by Michelle Dockery); Hilda’s arrogant brother Gideon Van Der Koy (played by Brett Gelman); and Melanie’s buffoonish husband Glen Van Der Koy (played Sharlto Copley), who is dominated by Melanie. (It says a lot that Glen took the Van Der Koy surname.)

The Van Der Koy family has a security chief named June27 (played by Jessica Rothe), and programmed assassin who wears a helmet and who might or might not be human. She has almost superhuman-like strength and becomes a formidable and elusive opponent to Boy. Meanwhile, Boy forms an alliance with two rebels: wisecracking Basho (played by Andrew Koji) and resourceful Bennie (played by Isaiah Mustafa), who both join in on the mayhem. Boy encounters many dangerous foes, leading to several brutal and bloody battles.

Skarsgård is quite skillful in combining the action and facial expressions required for this character who is supposed to be deaf and mute. Melanie the villain who is the most fun to watch in the movie, thanks to Dockery’s prickly performance. Janssen’s Hilda is a fairly generic and predictable villain, while Gideon and his bad jokes quickly become annoying.

“Boy Kills World” is by no means an intellectual movie, but some of the quips are amusing enough to keep most viewers entertained. One of the movie’s plot twists is very predictable, while other plot twists are not as easy to predict. The movie’s most surprising “reveal” has some imagination, which saves “Boy Kills World” from being just another violent action flick that’s a checklist of death and destruction.

Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate will release “Boy Kills World” in U.S. cinemas on April 26, 2024. The movie will be released on digital and VOD on May 28, 2024.

Tag: Yayan Ruhian

Review: ‘Lone Samurai,’ starring Shogen, Yayan Ruhian, Rama Ramadhan Ruswadi, Sumire Ashina, Faisal Rachman and Fatih Unru

Review: ‘Boy Kills World,’ starring Bill Skarsgård