This film premiered in Jakarta theaters on Friday night only in 1 cinema chain. So the option to watch it was a bit fewer than if it's playing in all of them. When my wife and I returned from 1 of her food tasting event in west Jakarta last night, we chose to watch this movie as it was the only new movie (out of 4 that came out this week) which was playing in the theater nearest our home and the only one we had sufficient time to be able to watch it. Well what is the whole story all about?
Brief Story Line
The movie started with the scene of a teenage girl named Lydia (Erin Moriarty - After The Dark, Captain Fantastic) trying to buy some bullets from a supermarket. After that she gave the bullets to her boyfriend Jonah (Diego Luna - Contraband, Elysium, etc) with his gang who were trying to rob a house. Jonah was trying to calm Lydia down for doing the robbery but the robbery soon went very wrong, resulting to Lydia had to get away from the house.
Feeling worried of being chased by Jonah's men, she contacted her father John Link (Mel Gibson - Mad Max, Braveheart, Lethal Weapon and many more) who was an ex convict and making money by making tattoes for people. As he was still in parole, he could not do any crime related activities. John was getting sober from alcohol addiction and grew friends with his sponsor Kirby (William H. Macy - Marmaduke, The Lincoln Lawyer etc) and each of them living in a trailer which were located across each other in a trailer park.
John who had been divorced with his wife had been looking for Lydia who ran away since she was 14 years old and put up advertisement of her as missing person. Naturally he was happy to hear her after few years and immediately willing to help her. But he noticed Lydia was having drug addiction and convinced her to stay at his trailer for 1 week before he let her go with the money she wanted to escape with.
During her stay in that trailer, Lydia kept on receiving messages on her phone from Jonah's men that they were going to catch her. John was also trying very hard to help Lydia on her addiction. Until 1 night, three gang members who were Jonah's men came to John's trailer. They were asking John to give her up. After some heated exchange of words and gunshots, those 3 left the trailer park with threats to John that they would come back.
John who was not going back to prison and was really confused why Lydia was having this kind of problem, had no choice but to leave the park with her. He knew that by doing this, he would be breaking his parole. Kirby who was his sponsor tried his best to ask John to stay and explain to the police he would not do it to protect his daughter.
So would John be able to save Lydia after all despite his problems with the law? What was Lydia actually doing with Jonah that would make her the target of the mafia who even assigned a very dangerous hit man to catch her? Watch them and find them all out till the end.
End of Brief Story Line
My wife and I did not have a lot of information about this movie. So we did not know what to expect about it. But the movie did have some nice moments in it. Particularly the relationship between a criminal father with his only daughter and also the unconditional love from the father to a child. This film was categorized as action thriller. For me personally I think this movie was more like a drama with some actions. Reason being the actions were not a lot in the film and there were more of dramatic moments.
For those who want to see different kind of action movie, I think this one can be an option. Remember that the movie itself is only playing in 1 cinema chain in Indonesia. One thing though. The language in the movie was very explicit as there were so many F words in it. Also it had some minor scene with drug use. I really think this movie was not suitable for teens let alone children. So the censorship body got it spot on when they categorized this as mature rating. Hence, it was really amazing when there were parents who brought their very young child to see this (yes in fact there were 2 such parents and 1 of them sit next to me.. What a real shock!). I really think the security or cinema persons should be more proactive in their role of restriction for audience based on the rating of the movie.
Apart from those disturbance from the child next to me, I personally had some fun watching the movie. It has its few bits of fun (scene involving the motel receptionist Jason) and also the action scenes especially in the finale. As I said above, since it was more drama than action, we should not expect so many gunshots or car chases or special effects of things blown away. Although the actions involving Mel Gibson was surprisingly still good. He was after all a 60 year old guy. I got to admit I was a bit amazed with how he was still able to do the stunt on the motor cycle. So if you are looking for a full action movie in cinemas, then this may not be to your liking.
A movie with the premise of father helping a daughter would be quite a lot, but I could not remember a movie where the father was an ex convict. Anyway, I understand that the movie was playing first at the Cannes film festival and it does not seem to be playing in US. And it also generated a very favorable rating from those. Though I myself did not have the very best moment in watching it as there were few moments that I felt a little bit bored, but overall it was an OK movie.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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