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| A scene from Bunohan: Return to Murder. |
By John Esther
Adil (Zaharil Adzim) is about to lose a serious fight, if not his life, when his friends kidnap him and rush him out of the ring and across the Thai-Malaysia border. This makes a group of thugs quite mad, so they send Ilham (Faizal Hussein), a particularly ruthless and efficient assassin, after Adil. Meanwhile, Baker (Pekin Ibrahim) is trying to swindle his family out of some precious land for foreign development.
Eventually merging into one story with multiple metanarratives in the fictional town of Bunohan (which means “murder), Adil, Ilham and Baker find they have a connection dating back many years. Rather than come to terms with their estrangement and reunite, the three men embark on a lonely mission, which may undermine everyone, plus Bunohan itself.
Written and directed by Dain Said, Bunohan: Return to Murder opens up in pretty spectacular fashion, with Said, cinematographer Charin Pengpanich and the editor HK Panca brilliantly piecing the parts and pace of the players participating -- with just a hint of the final result of their story. It is some cinematic genius the rest of the film fails to offer.
The film is too ambitious for its own skills. An attempt to be a martial arts action film and mediation on family dynamics for the working poor, the film achieves too little either way. After the opening fight scene the rest of the fight scenes are almost superfluous if not part of a larger narrative contrivance. Moreover, the mythical tones and tropes come off as a faux nod to Shakespeare’s King Lear.
Bunohan: Return to Murder screens June 19, 9:40 p.m., Virgin America Theatre.
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