Once again another new Indonesian movie was shown on Netflix which was never released in the cinemas. With a famous actor as the lead cast, I was obviously interested in watching it. So when it was available yesterday, I immediately gave it a try. OK, I will get on the movie now.

Brief Story Line (warning possible spoiler)

Story was set few decades in the future with a large gap between rich and poor and the impoverished had to live for scraps. Gaspar (Reza Rahadian - Berbalas Kejam, Benyamin Biang Kerok etc) was a detective who had been trying to locate his missing childhood friend for years. His investigation led him to Mrs. Yati (Dewi Irawan - Tabula Rasa, Sang Penari etc) and later a gold store owner named Wan Ali (Iswadi Pratama). Gaspar was also obsessed in a mysterious black box which happened to be inside Wan Ali's store. 

When he found out that he only had 24 hours to live, Gaspar decided to steal the box. But since the store was guarded by Yadi (Sal Priadi - Seperti Dendam, Rindu Harus Dibayar Tuntas etc), Gaspar tried to enlist some people to help him, starting with his former girlfriend Kik (Laura Basuki - Cek Toko Sebelah 2, Susi Susanti: Love All etc) and her new boyfriend Njet (Kristo Immanuel - Sleep Call etc). Agnes (Shenina Cinnamon - Penyalin Cahaya, Onde Mande! etc) a young woman who had known Gaspar for a while was also eager to help, although he was against it. 

So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.

End of Brief Story Line

I had high expectation when giving this movie a try as it was said to be gritty, dystopian and starring Reza Rahadian who was well known for giving wonderful performance. As soon as the movie started, the dark tone setting was immediately felt with a convincing enough showing of the bleak future, but I was a bit bothered by the loud sound of the background music while the dialogues were difficult to listen to. I tried increasing the volume but when the music was playing, I had to turned it down again which was troublesome. So I had to really rely on the subtitle.

Anyway the story telling to me was very slow and frankly I was not able to clearly grasp where the movie was heading. It took half hour to get to important part, but almost two third of the movie for it to finally became exciting. Granted the film looked stylish, but I do not think the conversations here were well done. The words being used were too formal like they were speaking from text books, not to mention the child actors did not look too convincing either. And that scene of Gaspar and Bu Yati conversing with each other was terrible. If it was supposed to bring humor, it certainly did not succeed to my opinion.  

I noticed in the opening credit that the movie was adapted from 2017 novel of the same title written by Sabda Armandio and won the award of Best Adapted Screenplay in the 2023 Indonesian Film Festival. I have no comments on the awarding as the committee would have seen things that I as casual viewers could not see. But personally to me it was hard to enjoy the film when you spent half the time trying to understand what it was trying to tell us. I also think this movie has very strong festival feeling. It appeared to be highly regarded having been nominated for few awards, including best director for Yosep Anggi Noen (The Science of Fictions etc), aside from the one they won. It even got the chance to be shown in Busan International Film Festival.

Overall to me this movie was not exactly what I had in mind. I was thinking it would be an interesting crime drama with a bit of mystery and wonderful story telling and some action. Sadly for me, the end result was a film that was hard to enjoy due to its unclarity of plot, stiff dialogues, uninteresting support characters and story telling that was not really well executed. Perhaps reading the novel would give me better pleasure. So if you are into festival movies, then I think you would like this one. But if you are like me and expect intense full suspense movie (like the title might have suggested), then it would probably be difficult to be entertained by this.

Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars