Indonesian Reviews Reviews

Film Review: Heaven and Hell (2018) by Bobby Prabowo

Southeast Asian video on-demand streaming service announced in 2017, six TV series titles to be produced by its HOOQ Filmmakers Guild 2017, an annual program designed to provide creative platforms for filmmakers in Asia to produce online TV series. The competition allows directors, producers or scriptwriters to submit scripts and pitches for TV shows, with the top five receiving $30,000 to produce a pilot episode that will debut on HOOQ.

The best out of these five pilot episodes, decided by Hooq subscribers and a panel comprising top directors and actors in Southeast Asia, including Mouly Surya of “Marlina the Murdere in Four Acts” will be converted into a full series produced and debuted on HOOQ.

‘s effort in the competition is a thriller inspired by true events, which revolves around the Mafia in Jakarta.

Chris is a student about to graduate from law school, and to marry his girlfriend. However, his ties with the local mafia lead and Uncle Buetse, lead him to participate in a kidnapping of his boss’s enemy’s daughter. However, at the last moment, Chris changes his mind, and finds himself having to face his old comrades.

As stated in the prologue, “” is actually the pilot of a series rather than an actual movie, and as such, leaves a lot of questions unanswered, particularly regarding the past of the main characters, although this is one of the elements the script seems to be based upon. The story seems a bit generic, but the implementation is quite good, and the combination of Patrick Tashadian’s cinematography with the martial arts scenes and the special FX is rather enjoyable.

Aufa Assagaf as Chris and Donny Alamsyah as his direct higher-up play the parts convincingly, in genre film fashion, while Salvita Decorte as Chris’s girlfriend provides the archetype of the damsel-in-distress competently. Prabowo’s own editing, along with Yovial Virgi’s music also function quite well, particularly in the action scenes, with the one in the parking lot and the one outside Chris’s house being the most memorable.

Overall, “Heaven and Hell” seems like a very entertaining action crime thriller, and personally, I would like to see the progression of the story, since the full-blown gangsters’ warfare seems inevitable, and the series seems to aim in the style of violent action implemented in films like “The Raid”.

About the author

Panos Kotzathanasis

Panagiotis (Panos) Kotzathanasis is a film critic and reviewer, specialized in Asian Cinema. He is the owner and administrator of Asian Movie Pulse, one of the biggest portals dealing with Asian cinema. He is a frequent writer in Hancinema, Taste of Cinema, and his texts can be found in a number of other publications including SIRP in Estonia, Film.sk in Slovakia, Asian Dialogue in the UK, Cinefil in Japan and Filmbuff in India.

Since 2019, he cooperates with Thessaloniki Cinematheque in Greece, curating various tributes to Asian cinema. He has participated, with video recordings and text, on a number of Asian movie releases, for Spectrum, Dekanalog and Error 4444. He has taken part as an expert on the Erasmus+ program, “Asian Cinema Education”, on the Asian Cinema Education International Journalism and Film Criticism Course.

Apart from a member of FIPRESCI and the Greek Cinema Critics Association, he is also a member of NETPAC, the Hellenic Film Academy and the Online Film Critics Association.

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