Marysa is getting pretty sick and tired of her mom, Sarah, haranguing her about her martial arts studies. She just wants to be a normal teenage girl and hang out with her best friend.
But Sarah is insistent on these lessons, fearing what is to come. Sarah knows something but will not tell Marysa which only strains their relationship. Then that day comes and in an explosion of bullets Sarah and Marysa are off and running away from bad guys toting machine guns and rocket launchers. Not too far behind is Paquita and her crew. Everyone wants Marysa but she does not know why.
Kardit's film certainly is entertaining. I laughed as much with it as I did at it. Guardian has no shortage of passion and is a brazen attempt to entertain. There are shootouts a plenty. When Sarah catches wind that someone is after Marsya two thugs show up to their house with machine guns and proceed to renovate it with bullets. Not satisfied with their work one of them pulls out a rocket launcher and lobs a couple rockets into it. Now Sarah can has the room to put that island in the kitchen of her dreams.
Unfortunately the screening did not start off well as a couple of the channels dropped out and we only got part of the sound. This carried on into the first fight scene and without most of the sound all we were left with were the visuals and they were awful. Now this was one of the rare melee scenes where a woman wielding knives attacks Marysa's 'dad', Vishnu, in his home. A lot of arms and legs are thrown. The toilet and sink are smashed. Obviously. But I swear Kardit and his DP attached a camera to the end of someone's finger and they stood there wagging it, saying, "Stop it. Stop fighting you two. Stop it!" The lack of sound only compounded the fact that they shot the action without allowing for any chance of coherence.
The editing of these hand to hand scenes is also infuriating. It is chopped to pieces. Kardit falls back on the go-to edit of each punch three times before it lands. To this day and until the day I die I am a staunch believer in allowing the action to dictate the direction. Not the other way around. Personally, I cannot appreciate the action if you chop up into tiny pieces. No one has cut my steak and delivered it to me in pieces in a very long time. Action films are my cinematic steak. I don't like action in pieces. Editing your punches, kicks and throws into bits does not make it more exciting. The only current director I have ever seen do this well were Gallants directors Clement Sze-Kit Cheng and Chi-kin Kwok. Even with their editing each throw had a flow and still conveyed the motion of the punch being thrown and landing without disrupting the action itself.
Kardit has punched out a lot of films in his short career. They were mostly suspense and horror films and this is his first foray into action cinema. I wish I knew who he watched for inspiration so I can go over to them and kick them in the shins. "See? See what you've done to this poor man's film?!?" The stunt choreography may be good but the camera moves around too much to tell.
There are some embarrassing moments with bad CGI during some of the vehicular stunts. I love the part early in the film when Paquita is being transported from jail and her crew help her escape. You have your usual semi-trailer truck into the side of the car move. Another CGI car slices through the semi-trailer and then he crews pulls out there SUV from the back of it completely unharmed. Good thing they parked it near the back of the trailer and not the front! Though the trailer was pretty much destroyed and on fire when the other car went through it. Wacky.
While the melees may be few there are no shortage of gun fights though. There are sporadic moments when they forget to render in shell casings. Bad guys pretty much walk into bullets. And Paquita never runs out of bullets in her barrel pistol during a lengthy shootout in the middle of the film. Her crew reloads all the time but no one else seems to notice. But I liked the nod to John Woo during the climactic battle in the warehouse with Sarah and her motorcycle. It felt like a nod.
You spend a lot of the time waiting for the other shoe to drop. You just know that true identities will be revealed and then everyone's motivations will be understood. And if you listen carefully you even hear Paquita (Falling Skies' Sarah Carter) say something that would give it away before Sarah (Dominique Diyose) finally drops the bomb on Marsya (Belinda Camesi). For sake of any surprise I would not give it away but will say that when the big reveal comes along how it unfolds is probably the most creative part of Kardit's film.
I want to be really forgiving because I know that with the success of the Raid films that this whole market has opened up more so for the Indonesian film industry and there is a flood of attempts to cash in on that exposure. The same thing happened in Thailand after the Ong Bak/Tom Yum Goon films and look where they are now? Where are they?
As far as action films go Kardit leaves nothing on the table. He tries everything. He does not always get it right but by golly he gives it what for. I am dismayed by the execution most of the time but I applaud the effort.