Brief Story Line
Set in the year 2027, 18 years after a racial riot in Indonesia, the racism towards Chinese minority was at all time high as they became object of racially motivated violence. Edwin (Morgan Oey - My Stupid Boss 2, Assalamualaikum Beijing etc) was a substitute teacher who had just transferred to Bukit Duri High School with many troubled students.
As soon as Edwin started, some of the students immediately showed disrespect especially Jefri (Omara Esteghlal - Ali Topan, Balada Si Roy etc) and his thug-friends who were anti-Chinese. Only few students who were at least willing to learn, like Kristo (Endy Arfian - Ghost Writer, Brandal-brandal Ciliwung etc) and his best friend Rangga (Fatih Unru - Pengabdi Setan 2: Communion, Modal Nekad etc). There was however another teacher named Diana (Hana Malasan - The Shadow Strays, Cinta Bete etc) who was very supportive of Edwin.
When another major riot suddenly erupted, Edwin and few others were trapped in school while Jefri and the rest of his gang tried to capture him. So what would happen to them and how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Wow that was just totally insane! When I read the synopsis of the movie earlier, I did not know that it had strong social theme of racism against Chinese minority in Indonesia. I only found out when I read the racial violence warning on its poster. And during the whole movie, the violence was explicitly shown through verbal and physical abuse and even implicit sexual violence. The illustration of riots in early part looked very realistic leaving audience felt breathless and gutted. It actually reminded me and my wife of the actual such riot occured in Indonesia back in 1998 where some of us experienced first hand on the terror.
The general plot itself was probably not that original about a group of people trapped in a confined space and must survive from a bunch of persons intent on capturing and killing them. It's probably quite normal to see very bad villains in a movie but the convincing background story gave us that extra horrified and worried feeling of what would happen to the protagonist Edwin if he was captured by Jefri. All of this could not have happened without the amazing job by the director Joko Anwar. There are only very few Indonesian film directors that I respect and he is certainly one of them due to his awesome works in the past like Pengabdi Setan, Pintu Terlarang, Nightmares and Dreams anthology series and others.
His great work here was not only directing but also in term of writing. From what I read, he actually completed the screenplay back in 2008. However he only decided to make this film now as he and the producer Tia Hasibuan felt the condition in Indonesia had not improved significantly and still faced the same issue. I also thought Joko Anwar did fantastic job in finding the right people to portray their roles here. Both of us felt that Omara Esteghlal was so absolutely convincing that we wanted to punish him ourselves while Morgan Oey gave very mature performance. In addition to the names I said above, there were few support cast like Landung Simatupang (24 Jam Bersama Gaspar etc) as principal, Satine Zaneta (Virgo and the Sparklings etc) as Dotty, Dewa Dayana (Aku Lupa Aku Luka etc) as Gerry and several others.
One thing that we (and I am sure the general audience) were not accustomed to was the dialogues as they were full of explicit strong language. It's funny that we feel fine when we heard the F word in English or S word in South Korean, but when all those profanity used so frequently in our native language, we felt really disturbed by them. The violent fights were well done here including the use of good special effects with wonderful sound effect. We loved the quality of the sound system which added the suspense, although sometimes we could not properly hear some of the words the people said (probably subtitles would be a good idea?).
All in all this is a totally intense action thriller that felt close to home since the riot shown was something that happened not that long ago with some of the direct/indirect victims still suffering from the traumatic experience. The movie purposely showed the extreme condition that could happen if there is no improvement on the social condition of racial discrimination. The story was greatly told with amazing acting by the cast in general. Even though my wife and I could have guessed the shocking & tragic twist, but still the way it was shown was brilliant. Plus it had an ending that we did not see coming. Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene here. So if you are fans of Joko Anwar's works, then by all means you could see his first non-horror movies in years and be blown away by this film. However, be warned that the strong violence, profane language throughout the whole movie might be disturbing. For us though, we really admired Joko Anwar's work and truly pray that such situation would never happen in Indonesia.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Additional Notes:
This movie was co-produced by Amazon MGM Studios. So there is strong chance it would be shown in the US either through limited release in the cinemas, or possibly through streaming.
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