Hassan keeps pressing Hussein the whole run of the movie to get married, even though Hussein was just 23 of age. I find this to hit a little close to home. Hassan told Hussein that after he had kids, everything that he did, was solely for his children. But Hassan could not even afford time and money for his kids, which we discover after the school called him regarding his son’s delinquency. The principal told Hassan to spend more time to discipline his child, and not depending on the school only to educate him. Hassan even accepted bribes because he couldn’t afford vacation for his family.
Hassan portrays that nagging married people part of society who won’t stop pestering you about their married life dogma, yet they actually fail at one. They didn’t even realise that their shortcomings in providing for their family is actually a failure, that they had the nerve to advice people to follow their footsteps.
2- Does justice exist?
I couldn’t agree with the notion that the movie is a social criticism, because this is not criticizing anything if it’s the truth. I was frustrated and upset for the fact that after the credits roll, the reality of the movie still lingers in the real world, encroaching into our bubbles either we realise it or not.
During the conclusion of the movie, I wished that nobody gets hurt, that the girl could escape back to Indonesia, Hussein didn’t kill anyone, Sugiman flees the scene. Their only mistake was crossing each other’s paths. All these people committed crimes, even more so the policemen, but their circumstances made them to. The real criminal for me was the upper echelon who holds the power and created the deplorable settings for the poor people to live in out of sheer greed.
Hassan didn’t think he was doing anything wrong, because his type of crime involves relatively small amount of money, while in his mind, the tokey balaks out there who bribe officials are the real deal.
So what is justice then? Powerless people got punished, beaten and humiliated, while those who have money and influence could escape unscathed. Even the policemen are subject to the cruel system. Justice is relative.
3- The reality is gripping
The moment Vanidah Imran steps into the silver screen, my opinion was sealed. Seeing her wearing “I love *random place*” t-shirt like an ordinary person, so devoid of her glamorous struts was refreshing. She is now a housewife who marries a policeman because she thinks it’s a good life move, who just wants money to pay deposit for her family’s vacation, and she lives in an apartment with 2 bedrooms which was so small the guest could practically see and hear what’s happening in the kitchen because the kitchen and the living room are almost essentially the same. This is the everyday reality of an urban poor mother.
The ugliness of construction site and the underbelly of KL’s urban life are gripping right off the bat. This is the kind of urban life that I recognized from my experience – not the extravagant-yet-minimalist IKEA-furnished home, not the expensive imported cars, not the neon-lit concrete jungle. This is the PPRT life where children run rampant unsupervised, parents too busy with work to even care about their children’s whereabouts, flat units that are so small but house like 3 families. This reality won’t subside after the movie ends. In fact, it would take forever for this to change in real life.
4- The strength of the cast lineup
I didn’t recognize lots of the ensembles, which is good because I didn’t have any prior knowledge of their style of acting. But Ario Bayu and Asmara Abigail are the shining stars. I could’ve sworn they casted both of them from real Indonesians who work in Malaysia, because their mannerisms and speech are so on point it didn’t look like they were acting at all. I genuinely cared for these two and I even hoped they were actors and not real Indonesians labour.
A bit of research revealed that they both portrayed an opposite of their real life characters – Asmara was a bit of a daring lady, playing a disheveled, messy maid while Ario is a stud alpha male whose character in the movie was a desperate father and brother who works as a labour, who was akin to a modern day slave.
Perhaps, for me, most strikingly is the fact that the evil characters are not portrayed as womanizers. I'm so tired of seeing lazy writing by simply making a character a sex maniac to tell audience that this is the bad guy, guys. By brushing aside the womanizer/prostitution trope, the movie focuses on the more evil vices which were usually got left out in local movies - evil of corruption, undocumented immigrants,, bribery. which is a welcomed exchange.
The fact that nobody ever translates this sort of story to cinema before is baffling. This is a relatable narrative that you won’t have to look far to find. Then again, maybe it’s because we need cinema as an escapism to a fantasy world we could only afford dreaming, that truth is an inconvenience we don’t want to be reminded of.
We don’t want to know that there is a father of five, undocumented, just fell to his death from the 11th floor at a construction site, and now his family back in Bangladesh won’t know anything because his corpse was quickly cremated unceremoniously. Or that a domestic helper was starving because she ran away from her employer who exploited her to do something that she didn’t sign up for, and she couldn’t run back to Indonesia because her employer kept her passport.
The truth is ugly. One Two Jaga which narrates a piece of the ugly truth left me feeling uneasy, unsettled and upset once I left the theater.
What I wish for:
1- More realistic gore, especially after Iedilputra and Timothy got tortured. I hope they did something similar like Pan’s Labyrinth, where the body of the rebel, who was still alive, was disfigured after he was tortured with his fingers twisted in various inhumane angles. The fact that those two guys didn’t suffer any major damage after we were shown that they should or would, destroys the immersion for me. And the fact that they couldn’t show fear in face of death annoys me a bit. I wanted them to emote more.
2- The choice of the ending song. I was hoping a theatrical, melancholic vibe to accompany the scene. But this was just a wishful thinking and this different choice of song didn’t affect the whole story that much after all.
3- The fighting scenes left so much to be desired. The actors didn't look really angry, they were holding back punches and kicks that it convey the notion that nothing was at stake.
All in all, I desperately try to love this movie, just like how I try to desperately love a pet that I received as a birthday gift when I hated pets. This movie got so many things right about real life that it makes me hate it because I hate to see the truth of our society right now.
P/S: I didn’t know why they censored the ‘anjing’ word. It does irritate you after the 10th anjing.
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