Ever since Dain Said’s highly-anticipated sophomore effort Bunohan (known internationally as Return to Murder) made its fascinating round at last year’s prestigious Toronto Film Festival, this locally-made movie has been earning high praise from reputable top critics especially Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. And here it is — let me just say Bunohan is simply a unique effort unlike most locally-made Malaysian movies that you often seen in the cinema. It’s a kind of genre-defying movie that is deeply poetic, not the typical kickboxing movie you might expect in the first place (thanks to the misleading trailer campaign). Mind you, Bunohan is strictly an art-house film and might bore many casual viewers who are particularly impatient with a meditative plot structure. It’s certainly admirable, but not nearly enough to rank this as one of the best Malaysian movies ever made. More on that later.
Bunohan begins with a kickboxer named Adil (Zahril Adzim), who is badly beaten by a vicious opponent in a Muay Thai fight-to-the-death match somewhere in Thailand. Halfway throughout the brutal fight, Adil is quickly rescued by his best friend Muski (Amerul Affendi) and escapes to a nearby border back to Malaysia where they subsequently seek refuge in his hometown of Bunohan.
In the meantime, corrupted promoter Jokol (Hushairy Hussin) hires a killer named Ilham (Faizal Hussein) to track down and kill Adil. Nevertheless, Ilham also ends up at Bunohan and subsequently discovers that he and Adil are actually half-brothers, which eventually makes things all the more complicated.
Lastly, there is another brother named Bakar (Pekin Ibrahim), a slick businessman who is trying to get possession of the one remaining piece of their father’s (Wan Hanafi Su) land for property development purposes.
All three of these brothers eventually cross paths with each other in Bunohan where family secrets, betrayal and conflicts come into play.
On paper, Bunohan sounds ambitious enough, but writer-director Dain Said, whose highly-controversial debut on 2007’s Dukun was banned in Malaysia due to its taboo subject matter on black magic, is sadly lackluster in the way he weaves out of his own labyrinth plot. Even though this movie is meant to be very artistic, the overall narrative structure is haphazardly told while the slack pacing (especially in the middle) is pa
infully excruciating to sit through. There are some scenes which seriously need a suspension of disbelief. Take this one for instance, when either of these three long-lost brothers cross paths, we hardly see any surprises in their expressions — which is frankly unconvincing. The kickboxing scene, in the meantime, is edited in a choppy fashion and it seems that Said has little interest to craft out any sense of kinetic excitement at all.
Despite most of the glaring flaws, Bunohan remains worthwhile enough to watch. The acting is top-notch, with Faizal Hussein giving a tour de force performance as a vicious killer who eventually reveals his soft side of his human conscience once he returns to Bunohan to hunt down Adil. As for Adil, Zahril Adzim is similarly excellent while Pekin Ibrahim almost steals the show from everyone with his perfectly sly performance as the self-centered Bakar. The rest of the supporting cast is equally great.
Let’s not forget the superbly expressive cinematography by Charin Pengpanich who brilliantly captured the sense of uncertain danger and despair by making full use of monsoon season in the rural countryside of Kelantan.
While Bunohan is far from the great movie one might expect it to be, there’s no doubt Dain Said proves himself as one of the most exciting local filmmakers to watch for in the future.
Rating: Dain Said is certainly one of the most exciting Malaysian filmmakers to watch for in the future, but Bunohan is far from being as great as one might have expected. (5/10)
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