Crossroads: One Two Jaga

Or is it or? Well whatever the case this is a nice little independent movie, that deals with small town (village?) criminals. The movie has a lot of characters and if you are not used to watching movies from Asia in general, you may get confused. A lot of story, a lot of people, so a second viewing may have to take place for you to get all of it.

Don't feel bad about that, try to cherish it rather. The movie is short and goes by quite quickly. More than decent with enough action to keep you on the edge of your seat too. If you have a heart for small budget movies that seem to have filmmakers with passion at the helm you could do worse

I watched this movie last night and found it a surprisingly very honest portrayal of things that are not highlighted in Malaysia. Things that normally are quickly swept under the carpet like police corruption, illegal bodies disposal, fights where the authorities are not heroic and lose and daily money issues that compromise the work done by law enforcers as they eke out their living. This movie does not go too far in it's realism with annoying and highly obvious bleeping of some dialogue and blurring of certain visuals showing the heavy hand of the official censorship board marring the quality throughout. Aside from the off line censoring it was also clear that the bad cops were not allowed to don their official uniforms and the audience only saw cops in uniform at the very end when the good guys went into action nabbing their corrupt colleagues. The action was good and the storyline kept my rapt attention throughout without a moment of checking the time. A very positive sign of better things to come and certainly worth the admission price.

The people involved in the making of this movie are very brave. I was surprised to see this movie made it to the cinema, as the authority in our country is quite sensitive to this kind of portrayal.. ehem, corrupted cops & VVIPs. The movie is very engaging from start till end. I was hoping for more when it ended 😄 Yes, please, Namron. Don't give up to make more movies with deep, rarely-explored message like this.

Don't wanna say to much.. very close to reality of malaysian.. u want to know black dirty secret of malaysia.. watch this

The good cop/bad cop theme is the most overused theme in Hollywood in the past but it is kind of refreshing to see it in Malaysian film. If you had already saw Training Day played by Denzel Washington and Ethan Hawke then this movie has some similar plot in it.

In respond to realism depiction of the story, I don't think you should treat this movie as a medium to promote stereotype towards the authority. Just enjoy it like any other films and learn something good from it.

From technical point of view, one obvious weakness of the movie is bad color grading which is in my opinion too much green. But overall I was impressed by solid performance of the actors. If you are Malaysian, do yourself a favor and go see this movie.