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Wu Kang Ren’s heart-breaking performance won him Best Actor at the 60th Golden Horse Awards in November.
Abang Adik (PG-13)
Starring Wu Kang Ren, Jack Tan, Serene Lim, Tan Kim Wang
Directed by Ong Jin
Two tight-as-brothers Malaysian Chinese guys exist day-to-day as distinctly different individuals in the poor, grimy downtrodden underbelly of Kuala Lumpur. Undocumented without identification cards — a fake birth certificate is produced to fool the cops — they struggle in future-less hidden limbo, fleeing occasionally from sudden police raids.
Malaysian writer-debut director Ong Jin’s unrelenting indie-bleak drama about forgotten outcasts is tough to watch but compelling to follow. Kinda like peeking at the unseen side of a sleazy place — like our Geylang — but more depressing and unmerciful since this tale ropes in, no pun intended, the death penalty.
Man, Malaysia’s rundown low-SES housing blocks, last seen in the Penang-based The Locksmith, aren’t exactly postcard-perfect like our HDB flats.
These aren’t real brothers. But scraping by together in the streets, they eat the same food, sleep in the same bed, store cash in tin cans, and share an unshakeable bond. Despite one fella being law-abiding and the other, law-breaking.
Abang (Taiwanese actor Wu Kang Ren) is the deaf-mute but optimistic older bro believing that as long as the pair get proper ICs, they’ll be okay. He diligently chops chicken meat in KL’s Pasar Besar Pudu wet market. Putting his faith in a big-hearted social worker, Jia En (The Garden of Evening Mists’ Serene Lim), who’s too pretty to be mired in filthy squalor here as she tries to get official identification to replace documents apparently lost in a fire.
Meanwhile, impatient hothead Adi (Shuttle Life‘s Jack Tan) hustles as a supplier of illegal Bangladeshi workers, getting beaten up by them after they’re arrested by immigration cops. “Money has helped us with everything,” Adi argues, seeking to get cash through illegal means since they can’t open a bank account or do anything in legitimate light while stateless.
Director Ong is described in the production notes as a filmmaker “focusing on social issues, humanities and morals”. He has a keen eye for the unwanted slipping through the cracks. Although you’d wish he hadn’t inserted stock misfits-of-society characters — like a transgender mother figure — at the expense of folks from other races. The Malays and Indians here are mostly background figures of either authority or crime.
Ong is uncompromising in the stark reality he creates as he elicits top-notch performances. Primarily from Wu who, as a non-deaf person, makes you believe that he’s really hearing-impaired. The performance won him the Best Actor prize at the 60th Golden Horse Awards.
He simply moves you with his basic goodness despite everything stacked against him and his infraction-prone brother. “You need to change to be a good person,” Abang hand-signs pleadingly to Adi.
The scenes of sibling unity are good manifestations of masculine love without raising snide, sceptical comments.
You settle in for a slice-of-life pic about brotherly strength before this story goes quite unevenly from docu-drama territory to thriller fare.
After an unexpected crime is committed, Abang Adik turns jail-cell melodramatic perhaps because this locale once contained the notorious Pudu Prison.
But it does allow for one very touching scene in which the essence of a silenced man’s perceived positivity is revealed.
Pinned down in confinement with a monk offering consolation, he blurts out with the desperate voice of the mistreated and misinterpreted: “Do you know how hard my life is? Do you understand?”.
You’d have a heart of stone if you don’t tear up at this unchained confession. (3.5/5 stars)
Photos: mm2 Entertainment
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