On the 8th of November 2017, my wife and I were fortunate to be part of a small group of people invited to the grand opening of new CGV cinema in AEON Mall at Jakarta Garden City (JGC) located in Cakung, East Jakarta area. We went to AEON Mall by bus provided by CGV team from their office in AIA Tower. Despite starting off late due to some people who were unable to follow the simple rule of coming on time, we managed to be there at 11AM and were given the tour of this latest cinema from CGV group. There were few nice photobooth areas and it also provided us new type of finger food in the Crunchy Zone. Furthermore, it was having 9 auditoriums which included 1 Velvet class and 1 Gold class auditoriums, while the rest of them were the standard auditorium. But, the best of it all, we were given the chance to experience watching a movie in the biggest auditorium in Indonesia from CGV. This Auditorium 1 was having around 670 seats and segregated into the usual seats as well as some of their Sweet Box type (special seats for 2 people without the divider in the middle and gave a different more personal & romantic experience). They even had separate doors to access the auditorium. After some introduction and slides presentation from CGV, we were finally shown the movie which I was about to tell you below. Btw, the more detailed info on the new CGV cinema would be available in my wife's blog soon. I will update link on that post later.
Brief Story Line
Jacob King (Chadwick Boseman - 42, Captain America: Civil War as Black Panther etc) arrived in Los Angeles with a specific intention in his mind, which was to look for his younger sister Bianca King (Sibongile Mlambo - Honey 3: Dare to Dance) whom he lost contact for a while. Jacob was having a visa to visit US only for 7 days so he had to do so during his short time in LA. Jacob stayed in a very cheap motel where he met a woman named Kelly (Teresa Palmer - Lights Out, 2:22 and few other movies) who stayed there with her young daughter.
The first person that Jacob visited was Trish (Natalie Martinez - TV series Under the Dome, CSI: NY, APB etc) who was Bianca's neighbor. And from her, Jacob would found that Bianca was no longer there but Trish did give Jacob new leads. Jacob's investigation would lead him to some powerful dirty people including gangster & politicians who have hidden motive and knowledge of what really happened to Bianca. During this investigation, Jacob also met with Bianca's dentist Dr. Wentworth (Luke Evans - The Hobbit trilogy, Beauty and the Beast etc) and a mysterious rich person named Mike Preston (Alfred Molina - Spider-Man 2, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot etc).
So what actually happened to Bianca? What did she stumble into and could Jacob find out all during his very short time in US? Find them all in this drama action movie.
End of Brief Story Line
To tell you the truth, I was not expecting to see this movie on that day since we were told that we would be shown a Japanese movie (which I did find out what it was all about). So when we were informed this would be the movie we would see, I did not know what to expect. At first I thought it would be a drama movie focusing only on the efforts Jacob had to do to find his sister. But after he found out the first clue, it became clear the movie would not be just a simple drama movie, instead it would involve some actions. It was pretty surprising but nevertheless became more enjoyable to me as I already had my eye on an action movie (to enjoy the very large screen and big auditorium).
Unfortunately though, the movie which had 102 minutes duration was done in a very slow pace. The scenes were not done fast enough and created some moments of boredom. Do not get me wrong, I am OK with slow pace sometimes, but this time the "investigation" was not really that intriguing as it did not give a lot of surprising twists. Although there was 1 quite surprising fact shown in the ending scene, so be sure to catch that one, but no end credit scene to be expected.
The action sequences here were pretty brutal, and even a bit gore on few occasions which definitely made the movie should be classified for mature audience. Plus there were some scenes which suggested sexual intercourse. During the screening of this movie, there were also some high school students which I think might not be too proper for them to see this movie as it dealt with a lot of mature subjects (I think CGV team represented by Wisnu also realized this as he apologized for it after the movie finished). Well done on this!
The movie can be categorized as drama action because it did have some action scenes. The drama was heavier with the difficulties Jacob had to endure to find out on his sister's whereabouts and what happened to her. There was not a lot of part where Chadwick Boseman could show his acting skill, but he did show glimpses of his fighting skills (which should be nice to see when his solo movie Black Panther released in 2018). The surprising thing was seeing Teresa Palmer here whom I think was either given a very good make up effects or due to her own skill as she looked like a very unhealthy (almost like a junkie) person. Alfred Molina was quite natural in this movie, while Luke Evans was OK.
Overall, the movie is definitely not an average full of action style or full of drama as it is a combination of both but heavier on the drama part. Due to the heavy plot and slow pace, my wife and I did not have the really best time seeing this movie. We enjoyed some of it but not the entire movie. However, it is definitely not a bad movie, but more like a movie directed to some specific kind of audience who could enjoy this genre. Btw, I did enjoy the nice Sweet Box seats while having some snacks from the Crunchy Zone and of course having the experience of enjoying CGV's biggest auditorium in Indonesia.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
PS: Congratulation CGV on the opening of this new cinema. Special thanks to CGV team (Cempaka, Rivki, Wisnu, Doddy and Nandra) for this nice event! Hope to have more of similar experience with CGV in future.
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