At last, my wife and I got the opportunity to see this movie after its premiere more than a week ago as we were on vacation then. We were pretty excited to see this Indonesian superhero film as it got a lot of hype and attention. Without further ado, here's more on the movie.
Brief Story Line
Alana (Pevita Pearce - The Guys, Sebelum Iblis Menjemput etc) was a professional fighter who had been adopted since childhood by Sarita (Jenny Zhang - Teka Teki Tika etc), the owner of fight training facility. She had to train hard to control the rage that was inside of her for years. Meanwhile, detective Jatmiko (Reza Rahadian - Benyamin Biang Kerok, Habibie & Ainun trilogy etc) had to adapt with the situation in the police department which was corrupted even from the top, including handling idealist reporters such as Tangguh (Jefri Nichol - Hit & Run etc).
Due to some reasons, Alana got into altercation with Mateo (Randy Pangalila - Qodrat etc), the son of wealthy corrupt businessman Prayogo (Surya Saputra - Hangout etc) which endanger the life of everyone around her. As things became more dangerous, Alana was approached by the mysterious man later revealed to be Kala (Dimas Anggara - London Love Story trilogy etc) with his grandmother Eyang Mariani (Christine Hakim - Perempuan Tanah Jahanam etc) who seemed to know a lot about Alana's history.
So what would happen to Alana and how would she cope with her rage and power? And how did she become the superhero Sri Asih? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Like I said above, this movie had gotten a lot of hype ever since its early screening to some selected people who had high praise of it. Obviously as fans of superhero films, my wife and I were really looking forward to see this. From the start of the movie, we were already shown some intense moments supported by CGI that looked really good, and the introduction of Alana was done quite smoothly to my opinion. As soon as Pevita Pearce was given the chance to show off her fighting skills, we both were immediately in awe of how well she did. She genuinely looked like a professional MMA fighter and really convincing as though she had done this for years.
As the story progressed, I felt it was moving at standard pace, not too slow but not so fast either. It also felt a bit incoherent with jumping a bit from one part to another. Personally I thought the part where Alana accepted her fate seemed to be over simplified and we also thought the movie was missing the transformation part of Alana to Sri Asih (with all her super abilities). The villains were pretty decent at first but ultimately they were the perfect enemy of Sri Asih.
In term of action, this one was truly amazing. We really liked the early fight sequence especially those ring fights and best of it all was the climax fight. That was just brilliant and so awesomely executed like we were watching Hollywood superhero action movies. The special effects were extraordinary and looking at the closing credits, I noticed they were done by local Lumine Studio (who also did the visual effects for Satria Dewa: Gatotkaca) and I strongly believe they should be applauded for their work. Only thing that we were not satisfied were the fights in the middle where Alana had to fight with the goons which looked too obviously staged (my wife said they were like dancing instead of fighting). Few times we also had difficulties in understanding the dialogues conversed, not sure if it was due to the sound effects or the editing department. Perhaps having subtitles in the movie would be a good idea.
Some of the cast did their job well such as Reza Rahadian (seemed to always did great with whatever role he was given), the senior Christine Hakim and our favorite Surya Saputra. Meanwhile the others were pretty decent but few were not too natural in their part. There were few famous stars as cameos and likely will appear more in future movies. The movie's directing was quite good and I thought Upi (famous for directing My Stupid Boss and its sequel, 30 Hari Mencari Cinta etc) did her best in making this an entertaining superhero film. She also co-wrote the story together with Joko Anwar. Unlike Gundala which felt dark and serious, this one was a bit more fun and lighter and not too much political part.
Overall to us, this was a really enjoyable movie. The action sequence coordinated by Uwais team were truly awesome particularly those early fights and the finale. The story was not too complicated and quite easily understood. There were few violence which justified the classification for 13+, although in the studio we saw this movie, there were few children who watched with their parents. Oh there was a mid end credit scene (no post end credit scene) which got us even more excited for the BumiLangit Cinematic Universe future. With this brilliant second movie, it really has a bright future and hopefully BCU would become a huge success like Marvel Cinematic Universe. So if you want to see entertaining Indonesian superhero movie with attributes as I mentioned above, then you can give this a try as it is still available in plenty Indonesian cinemas.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Notes:
Sri Asih was based on comic books first published in 1954 written by R. A. Kosasih which was said to be one of the earliest comic in Indonesia. There was also a movie made in that same year directed by Turino Djunaedy as the first Indonesian superhero film ever.
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