Making an independent action film is one thing, as the hardships and challenges that come with it tend to outweigh the more prosperous and opportune aspects there could be. Trying to accomplish this sort of task is another whole ‘nother ordeal, particularly in the midst of a global pandemic, although suffice it to say, even those projects, however which way they rate, were watchable.
Director Ranjeet S. Marwa came into his feature debut, Exiled: The Chosen Ones, after years of directing smaller independent projects, of which nearly all of them are unavailable to watch anywhere as of this write-up. When he took off at the top of 2020, launching a crowdfunder for Blood Rush, a new thrilling action feature in the vein of films like Headshot and The Raid, expectations were high, even including my own. To say the least, however, enough time has passed that with Blood Rush falling through, and Marwa and his team looking to advance their endeavors, ultimately segueing onto Exiled: The Chosen Ones finally grants us a small window into what moviegoers and fans of the genre can expect.
For this, we get a sixty-seven minute microbudget dystopian action horror that spotlights Singaporean actor and action star Sunny Pang, front and center for a story set in the year 2028, awakening in a dismal and dilapidated concrete arena known as the “Badland Jungle” where Pang, in the role of an ousted Yakuza enforcer named Hiro, now finds himself among a hodgepodge of malefactors all forced to fight and kill each other in a web-broadcast game where the rich place their bets. The remainder of the film often toggles back and forth to Hiro and other characters, including a woman named Amber (Hannah Al Rashid), while landing our protagonist right in the deadly throes of larger-than-life killer miscreants such as Victor (François Mequer), Bulldozer (Jon Xue Zhang) and Kato Plasm (James Bryhan), all before finally squaring off with a sadistic soldiering butcher named Igor (Nick Khan).
Punching well above its weight, Exiled: The Chosen Ones makes the grueling effort of trying to pass itself off as a worthwhile indie successor to films like The Raid, Headshot, and The Night Comes For Us, as per much of Marwa’s own motivation. The action sequences, directed by Khan in collaboration with Pang per his specialty as key founder of Ronin Action Group, are ambitious and conceptually up to par with the kind of visceral, blistering and gruesome spectacle you could expect, although the impact only lasts as long as any excitement one could get from watching almost any of the action scenes. The delivery falls flat due to the film’s own serious lack of character development, substance, and a contrived action-for-action’s-sake approach to storytelling that almost numbs any potential interest, and the film’s opening voice-over narration leaves a lot to be desired.
There’s plenty of talent in this film that’s worth keeping an eye on, though, including Pang, who has made headway in the last decade between work in Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia, and as of late, in the U.K. with an upcoming role in Tom Hardy headliner, Havoc. Fans may also recognize Oka Antara in an otherwise ancillary role as an elusive sniper who operates outside of the game under the orders of the game’s host. Theirs are among just a handful of the film’s performances that try to bring something worthwhile to the film’s progression, but it’s challenging to contextualize a film this disappointing even with some of its positives, especially when most of the acting is bad and overwrought, and its mechanics hardly meet the standard.
Before I recapitulate, it should be noted that I felt an obligation to review this film as I’d been covering Marwa since the start of the pandemic, with the Birmingham-based director currently ramping up screenings for his latest sophomore effort, Rupture, starring Mark Strange which also heads to fledgling streamer, Mometu, in 2023. The quote on earlier key art for Exiled: The Chosen Ones was specifically for the trailer, which I provided to Marwa upon request out of my own zeal for an independent filmmaker grinding at his craft, and in no way represents my thoughts on the film when I screened it after the fact.
Barring these and all other implications to the matter is that the film is now available on Tubi in the U.S., with a version that looks unfinished and rushed to its release. The version is uncolored, ungraded, and unformatted and, by any measure, can be easily deemed as unwatchable. Whether it was Marwa’s decision to release this film as is or Tubi’s is not something I’m fully sure of, although if you decide to sit with Marwa’s latest sixty-seven minute labor along with its six-minute minutes of closing credits and post-credit sequences, do so at your own risk, and hope that Rupture will be the proper outing that moviegoers deserve.