Rating: C-
Dir: Roslan Hussin
Star: Julian Cheah, Michael Madsen, Aaron Aziz, Jehan Miskin
RIP Michael Madsen. It’s startling to think that his career-making turn in Reservoir Dogs was over thirty years ago. As we noted in our review of Megalodon, he has since basically become the epitome of an actor for hire. His presence in a film is as much a warning to the wise as an inducement – usually in proportion to the size of his name and image in the promo material. Here, I venture to suggest you see slightly more of him on the sleeve than the true central character, and the results are as wobbly as you would expect. The positives of an interesting idea are more than outweighed by a highly wobbly lead performance, whose failings Madsen only highlights.
To be fair, I’m not sure how much is a language barrier, with Cheah’s proficiency in English apparently getting between him and the dialogue. There are some actors present here who can emote successfully in the language: Madsen isn’t the only one. But whenever Cheah is on-screen with one of them, the disparity is particularly palpable. He plays Prince, the adopted son of a CEO who is supposedly being groomed to take over the family corporation. However, brother and genetic offspring Petra (Meskin) is convinced that Prince is stealing his rightful inheritance, and frames Prince for the murder of their father. Prince flees to France where he meets the dubious Carlton (Madsen), who offers to put him back in the chairman’s seat – for a price, naturally.
In this saga of family business, loyalty and treachery, there’s something faintly Shakespearean, and the Malaysian location is fresh and used to good effect. There are some scenes which do work reasonably well, such as a lesson in literal gun control Prince receives from the man who’ll be helping him take back the throne. It makes clear that the hero is entirely out of his depth, and unsuited to engage in a violent corporate counter-coup. Not that this stops him, naturally. Though the ending is weird: for once, it feels as if the film needed another five minutes before rolling the credits, as it feels strangely unfinished. Mind you, can’t say I was sorry to see it end.
Madsen is his usual, reliable self, playing a character who, right from the start, is clearly not somebody with whom you should mess. It’s a more interesting character than the blandly irrelevant Prince, and I don’t think it’s just the performance. I suspect the writing is at fault as well; it feels as is scripter Calvin Wong was far more enthusiastic about the villains than the hero. I was hoping for some decent martial arts, until I remembered that Malaysia, where this comes from, is not Indonesia. So we get poorly edited fights, with the camera pushed in too close to see much. This may not be the finest memorial to Madsen. But of his 249 movie credits on the IMDb at time of writing [including thirteen in posthumous post-production], it feels an appropriate one.