La frontière des ombres

"I don't understand why this film received such a poor rating. This is the first film that I find very realistic. It portrays the actual conditions of the Indonesia-Malaysia border region, where the culture and social dynamics are the same but the countries are different, depicted very well.

This is the work of the genius anthropologist Dave Lumenta, which describes the conditions at the end of the New Order era in Indonesia. Perhaps viewers or outsiders' expectations might not grasp this and assume it is merely fantasy."

"I have never seen an Indonesian film that is truly bold in presenting a very sensitive story, such as the Dayak tribal customs, communism, and mysticism, all within a single narrative."

Borderless Fog is one of those movies that come and go. Though solid on some aspects, its convoluted story might miss the mark on delivering a compelling experience. Enjoyable if you like Cinema from less-than-mainstream venues, but average at most.

The premise of this story is interesting and worth exploring. A newly assigned woman detective is investigating a murder that happened at the border between Indonesia and Malaysia, in the Island of Brunei. The story promises Political conflicts, corruption, conspiracy, and mystery, thus captivating the audience.

Another nice element is the culture-heavy setting, which adds a drama element to the story. Seeing Indonesia-Malaysia, and Brunei, through the lens of the story adds an interesting backgorund to the whole plot.

The execution, though, is a mix-bag. As the story progresses, we see that most of the investigation elements are interrogations - accurate with how overall investigations go, and, in Brunei, maybe that's the extent of their Forensics, - but overall progression is a bit off. A few plot events happen by chance, which move the "investigation" further, but the story lacks that intelligent thinking the audience would want from the detectives.

That culminates in a complicated storyline, one that could force you to either read online what happened or, as a warning here, pay close attention to the dialogue - as one should. It is easy to miss important expository information, and, by the end, feel cheated. The ending, however, does leave things too unresolved, the ending scene perhaps a critical hint at how things work there.

Sanja, the main character, ends up with a flat development arc. Acceptable but unexplored potential. Putri Marino's acting, on the other hand, is quite alright.

Overall, Borderless Fog delivers a mixed crime and mystery experience through a convoluted plot arc. If you get it from the start, the movie gets a shiny star - if not, and you have the time to read through some blogs, adding to the payoff understanding, you should understand what this review entails: intelligent plot arc through a complicated execution. In the end, though it is an interesting story, it missed the point of what it tried to preach.

Borderless fog gets a six from me, netflixs new thrirller which is set along the malysian indonesian border. I thought this film had a pretty good story but thats not to say it felt overlly muddled. Sanja is a detective. But like a lot she is dealing with things from her past and those things will come back to haunt her as she investigates a serial killer case. A series of grusome discoveries that start after a mans body is found decaptiated. But as the head is in a different country she is forced to work with another man who dosnt gel well to start with but they get there. The actual detecitve part of it just made the film go on to long and it felt like nothing actually got finished. Overall good watch but nothing to great.

I am very much for strong, professional female characters in movies. I feel we don't get enough of them in feature films (series might be different though). And this is especially true in Asian cinema where women are either strongly sexualized and/or are a shallow bloodthirsty revenge tool or a sidekick or mysterious love interest.

So this movie delivers in that regard, I really liked the actress and her character, her style, pretty much everything. The plot was ok for the most part, quite complex, I was having trouble following the opposing sides in the beginning, but the reveal was a little lacking. The build-up was ok, but I guess I was expecting a little bit more, and it ended somewhat illogically with the last head. Also I suspected the killer early on, there was something fishy about that guy lol... But I won't fault it too much for that, I just won't rate it as highly but I think it's better than most Asian movies on Netflix.

Also, I just realized she played the lead in Possessive. Which I also recommend. That was decent too. Good role also.

This Indonesian killer thriller is so disjointed it's almost incoherent. In fact the only thing that keeps this movie from being completely incomprehensible is that it adheres so closely to genre tropes that you can fill in most of the blanks with inferences from standard Scandi-Noir. A plucky lady cop with a dark secret gets assigned to track a rural serial killer with a local motive in the steaming jungles of ... whoah! Is that a Predator?!? Get to da choppa! Wait, sorry, false alarm. So anyway there's some expected procedural stuff, red herrings, and character revelations; and then in the final act the script goes way off formula, leading to a confused and confusing finale. Don't waste your time.