Brief Story Line
Raka (Rio Dewanto - Ben & Jody, Kamu Tidak Sendiri etc) had been working as security guard in the Court House witnessing various cases tried with the latest controversial one which resulted to injustice ruling. Meanwhile his pregnant wife Nina (Niken Anjani - 13 Bom di Jakarta, 1 Kakak 7 Ponakan etc) was in the final stage of studying to become a lawyer.
However all their future planning was ruined when Nina was murdered by Dika (Elang El Gibran - Srimulat: Hidup Memang Komedi, Guna-guna Istri Muda 2025 etc). Being the son of a wealthy dirty businessman, Dika was able to hire a sleazy but highly successful defense lawyer Timo (Reza Rahadian - 24 Jam Bersama Gaspar, My Stupid Boss 2 etc) who was willing to do anything to win cases. When the trial led by Judge Hanum (Dian Nitami - Reuni Z, Dunia Tanpa Suara etc) did not seem to proceed in Raka's favor, he decided to take matters in his own hands.
So how would the story conclude? You could find out in this movie.
End of Brief Story Line
I knew about this film when it was released in Indonesia back in November 2025. Despite knowing that it has an interesting plot, I decided against seeing it in the cinema and chose to wait for the release in streaming platform. And turned out my decision was spot on cause it took just around 4 months to have it released on Netflix. Anyway the story and plot was rather non conventional for Indonesian movies which were mostly horror, family drama, comedy or teen romance. So it was always refreshing to see something different like this one.
When I watched this movie, my first reaction was pleasantly surprised by the professionally done action sequence. The fighting sequence was quite well executed with nice enough explosions (and that scene in the parking lot of the hotel was something that I had seen only in Hollywood or major production films/series). I believe it was due to the film directed by Lee Chang-hee (who was known for directing the highly rated A Killer Paradox series and The Vanished) together with Yusron Fuadi (Darah Nyai, Tengkorak etc). This marked the first time ever a South Korean directing Indonesian movie. Both of them were also credited as writers with Oh Ji-young (writer of Do Do Sol Sol La La Sol TV series etc). The story telling was actually pretty good and easy to follow. However, there were times when I was bothered by the dialogues as they were done in too formal way. I could understand during court room scenes, but other than those, they sounded very weird. This part was already mentioned by my wife's nephew who is a huge movie enthusiast and already seen this in the cinema back then.
Through out the whole film, I thought the scenes in the court room and certain parts were quite OK, but I am not too sure why the intensity somehow did not feel strong enough. Despite the pretty awesome performance of Reza Rahadian (really made us want to punch him in the face) and Rio Dewanto (who looked different without his moustache) plus Elang El Gibran who was not bad, I thought the supporting cast was a little less convincing which probably contributed to the lack of grit and thrill here. Other than the names I mentioned above, there were also appearances of Dimas Aditya (Pengabdi Setan etc) as the prosecutor Burhan, Tubagus Ali (Detektif Jaga Jarak etc) as the hotel employee Gilang, Jessica Katharina (Sabtu Bersama Bapak TV series etc) as Raka's old friend Wati and few others.
Although the story telling was not hard to understand, there was one thing that I thought was not detailed enough and I had to put the pieces together, i.e Raka's history. The film has a duration of 1 hour 40 minutes, so the movie makers probably think it was already quite long and did not want to add any more scene for those. Btw, there was no mid or end credit scene here but I did notice so many Korean names as part of the crews. Aside from the action and some interesting court room scenes (there was a brief note before the start that it was dramatization and did not reflect the actual condition of trials), I also like the ending which was pretty conclusive and quite realistic. Oh before I forgot, this film also has an English title of The Verdict for international audience (in case you are searching by title in Netflix).
So if you are in the mood for something unique in Indonesian movie other than the traditional horror/drama genre, then you are welcome to give this a try. It's an admirable effort that should be appreciated to diversify the kinds of films we could see in Indonesia. Although it might not be up to the level of great, but I think it's enjoyable enough and hope it would be successful in streaming to convince Indonesian movie producers to create more films like this.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.25 out of 5 stars
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