Timur Review: Indonesian Action Star Iko Uwai’s Directorial Debut Delivers Savage Fight Scenes But The Brother-Vs-Brother Drama Is A Bore
The Raid star’s first outing as director scores points for its brutal close-quarters combat, even if the story gets lost among the trees.
Timur (M18)
Starring Iko Uwais, Aufa Assegaf, Jimmy Kobogau, Yasamin Jasem, Macho Virgonta Hungan
Directed by Iko Uwais
Indonesian action star Iko Uwais kicked ass vertically while ascending floor by floor up a gang-infested apartment block in 2011's thrilling The Raid.
Now it's horizontally as he plays Timur, an elite special-forces soldier taking on a spread-out tribe of anti-government rebels. They’ve kidnapped a group of “flora and fauna” researchers in a vast Indonesian jungle, Timur’s childhood home, that’s “four times the size of Jakarta”.
I’m trying to recall what the terrorists demand. They seem to be mean-and-green denizens who blame the feds for their land being invaded. Kinda like an eco-version of Trump's pseudo patriots.
Timur, as expected, perks up every time Uwais, directing for the first time, pummels a supply chain of baddies.
Alas, its plot, inspired by an actual 1996 hostage rescue mission in the former Irian Jaya, is like the size of the jungle too. A few times more predictable, bland and straightforward than The Raid, with a similar brothers-on-opposite-sides angle thrown in again.
Oh, brother.
Away from the tight, confined concrete jungle which made The Raid so memorable, this real jungle pic seems lost in its indisguishable setting — West Java, reportedly. It plays like a sloppy story going around in circles with folks acting too loco.
Spectacularly dumb villagers with parangs keep charging straight at troops with guns to be eviscerated up close and personal like ducks at a shooting gallery. Er, are people bunking in the jungle big fans of Call Of Duty?
Meanwhile, you wonder why the same small bunch of soldiers, led by team leader Timur, keeps bumping stealthily into the villains, Predator-style, as though they're the only ones chopper-ed in. We see their concerned commanders hovering over useless plans.
All this is set up, of course, for the close-quarters combat scenes we only care about despite attempts to humanise the tale with said brotherly-love dilemma and a female hostage (Yasamin Jasem) offering damsel defiance.
Choreographed by the Uwais Team into parang vs gun, knife vs knife, fist vs fist whacker-thons, the money-shot extended fight sequences among foliage and inside huts that are more survival mayhem than Uwais’s trademark pencak silat moves, make the Jackie Chan Stunt Team look like boy scouts.
They’re interspersed with numerous flashbacks of Timur, his fierce commando buddy, Sila (Jimmy Kobogau), and their bitter, dejected foster brother, Apolo (Aufa Assagaf), who’s left behind to join the terrorists when they enlisted in the army.
Gotta say. The bond among the trio is pretty well portrayed. Timur wants to save his estranged bro. Sila sticks to his military credo — “In war, there is no choice.” While Assagaf’s isolated Apolo is compelling in his bearded sullenness.
But those sentimental flashbacks are an incessant eyeful. We get it. These dudes used to be really close as a family since they keep saying this “F” word.
An attempt is made to give the whole thing some sort of mythical proportion as the chunky rebel leader, Bapa (Arnold Kobogau), wearing an Arctic fur cap for the tropics, resembles a Colonel Kurtz knock-off in charge of his own Apocalypse Now private militia against the Indon army.
He looks ridiculous.
Director Uwais should’ve given him a banana hat instead. (2.5/5 stars)
Photo: Mudkiller Films
