Bang: So Bad It's (Almost) Brutally Watchable

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C+

There’s a party scene in director Wych Kaosayananda’s straight-to-stream gangster thriller Bang, wherein guests take turns bashing in a rival gang member’s head with a baseball bat, while onlookers watch as if enjoying a clever round of charades.

The pulverized head stays just out of frame, but we see the well-dressed, sophisticated guests clutching cocktails and tiny plates of hors d’oeuvres. It’s as if Bang hits pause—not to spare us the gore, but to bask in the sheer audacity of the moment.

Jack Kesy is William Bang in Bang.

That’s when you know you’re in B-movie territory. Not the self-aware, tongue-in-cheek kind, but the kind where actors chew into their scenes like a starving velociraptor.

The film stars Jack Kesy as William Bang. Yes, Bang is the character’s actual name. No, it does not appear to be a nickname, and yes, it’s meant to sound exactly like that. Bang is a career hitman because with a name like Bang, there aren’t that many options

Presiding over this gang is Peter Weller, hamming it up gloriously as the sadistic kingpin. Weller plays his role like a Bond villain spin-off, insisting his hitman wear a body-cam so he can livestream the carnage from the safety of his lair. It’s not enough that his enemies die; he has to relish every gruesome moment. It’s this kind of commitment to villainy that would do Dr. No proud.

Weller’s over-the-top villainy also gives the film a clever narrative trick: we see Bang’s seamless kills, then cut back to Weller beaming like a proud maniacal papa. Psychopath meets prodigy. Bang is cold, clinical, and emotionless—until he has a change of heart—literally.

But before we can get too comfortable with Bang’s ice-cold demeanour and his commitment to the kill, fate intervenes: Bang is blindsided by an assassin, and to save his life, surgeons transplant the heart of a man who died driving his wife to the hospital to deliver their first baby.

“You got the best part of him,” the dead man’s widow tells Bang, after he’s miraculously patched up with barely a scar to show. And so begins the film’s awkward flirtation with conscience. If there’s a moral compass in Bang, it’s buried between bullet wounds and well-manicured pecks. Kaosayananda ensures there are plenty of opportunities to check for scars—the wardrobe department must have saved a ton on shirts.

Of the film’s saving graces, one of them is Weller. Weller knows exactly what kind of film he’s in and bless him for it. He swaggers through scenes with the boredom and confidence of someone very aware he’s the best actor in the room—and he is. The rest of the cast range from capable to competent, many who seem to realize halfway through a scene that this isn’t the career launcher they had hoped for.

Kaosayananda directs like someone who’s binged on every available made-for-Tubi gangster flick and cranked all the dials to eleven: graphic violence, relentless shootouts, inexplicable nudity, and moral ambiguity.

The kills are brutal and frequent, sometimes inventive, and often shocking. If there’s a meaning to Bang, it’s that cruelty makes for good cinema—so long as you don’t stop to think about it. Which is exactly what the film doesn’t want you to do.

Is it good? No. But is it watchable? Absolutely. But please, do not categorize this as “so bad it’s good”—that implies ironic enjoyment. Bang operates in its own category: so bad, it’s almost watchable. And in the crowded deluge of disposable entertainment, that’s almost a compliment.

Bang is directed by Wych Kaosayananda and stars Peter Weller and Jack Kesy. Bang begins in select theatres and On Demand, July 11, 2025.