Blood Brothers, and the establishing of a Malaysian cinematic identity

We are living in a paradoxical time where acts of love are censored, while gruesome murders are not only approved but funded for public entertainment. A time where fingers are constantly pointed at others in the ongoing debate over Malay Muslim identity—yet the image of a group of gangsters walking proudly in slow motion is met with thunderous applause. Gone are the days when villains wore eyepatches and had names like Paragas, Katipang, and Jagindas.

Now, we have a real-life parallel: a globally infamous kleptocrat, shamelessly walking in a full suit, uncuffed, towards court, flanked by hordes of supporters. There’s even a magazine cover showing the Kepala Naga shaking hands with a real-life political figure. Sometimes, fiction isn’t just stranger than truth—it’s almost indistinguishable. We’re living in a time where the seam between reality and illusion is rapidly fading.

Not long ago, there was public outrage over a theatre adaptation that showed a group of Malay men in the same frame as glasses of alcohol in a nightclub. Yet now, there’s barely a whisper of protest from the same camp (or anyone else) when far more explicit portrayals are shown. Tattooed Malay men. Earrings. Giving the salam before committing murder. But somehow, it's the pondan who gets the ban.

It’s quite clear this is a direct adaptation of a generic mainstream Hollywood action flick, repainted in Malaysian colours. Maybe it’s part of an industry tactic to train the local film workforce—but a few creative tweaks in the writing wouldn’t break the bank. Despite yet undisclosed budget for production and promotion, the word lazy still applies, for reasons stated above. Furthermore, the mix between real cinema and mediocrity has been normalized with streaming service where the audience are driven to accept a certain 'look' or 'tempo', projecting out from the same screen.

Mainstream cinema seems locked in a race to make things bigger, louder, and filled with new camera movements—yet contributing nothing to the actual building of society. That’s because those who control the media want the public to remain ignorant, so they can keep selling their nonsense and holding onto power—until someone comes up with a more creative way to sell the same bullshit. Like that famous Martin Scorsese quote about theme park films.

Gangsterism isn’t didactically about how loudly you can scream profanity. Sometimes, silence says more—if handled by a capable director. But in a society where poetry is treated as a dumping ground for underperforming students—shamed and marginalized—we are now harvesting the bitter fruit of that system. And many are profiteering from it.

All this, just to beat the last guy’s ticket sales. There goes niat and keikhlasan. As one local filmmaker once said: “We need clever audiences to make clever films.” The problem is, it’s a Catch-22: every solution loops back to the original problem.

What this film is subliminally saying is: crime pays. It gets you the riches, the nightlife, and zero fear of religious officers storming in. The cops know you’re guarding a local drug lord, but it’s all good—because the Kepala Naga has political connections. And the underaged son of a peeping-tom dad is the one holding the QR code for payments. Guess what he grows up to be? It is all in the semantics.

The protagonist’s early character arc involves theft, illegal gambling, and bullying. He’s saved at his lowest point by a bigger gangster—an anti-hero, a criminal protagonist, a local Dom Toretto who seems immortal despite endless stabs and bullets. There’s also an Odin-like Kepala Naga who favours one child over another. The usual themes: legacy, betrayal, and the duality of power. In the final scene, the protagonist even rides off into the sunset.

The story of gangsterism is the same everywhere. But what separates great cinema—and great directors—is how it’s told, and whether it's grounded in meaningful local context (beyond just swearing in the local dialect). One of the greatest examples is the baptism and assassination sequence in The Godfather (1972), which contrasts a peaceful holy rite with brutal murders across the city. This cinematic concept comes from the legendary Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein—his Theory of Montage, in this case, tonal montage, which uses emotional tone to create resonance, rather than relying purely on narrative or visual continuity.

If you’re aiming for an Oscar—or simply to tell a deeper story—this is the kind of storytelling we should be adapting.p/s: In a recent revisit of another naga in a form of Duan Nago Bogho (2023) in Netflix, a great start in Act 1 in introducing the protagonist who plays the Peran character which is close to what The Joker is, twisting reality, laughing in the face of suffering, and blurring the line between sanity and madness. The potential of it to be a theme for the struggling of the art of Mak Yong was there, and the challenges of injustice, identity, mental health, and the fine line between victim and villain. Yet someone turned it into another cheap KL Gangster trope midway. Sad.Ironically, the actor Hushairi Husain plays the same antagonist archetype in this one. Praying it is not an idea for another godforsaken cinematic universe.