Malaysian cinema has been around for close to a century. Its industry has certainly evolved through the times, and with that growth came the last fifteen years in which martial arts films in the region have become just a little more prolific. Director Areel Abu Bakar has since begun staking his claim as of several years ago, scoring a major win at the New York Asian Film Festival with Geran – a.k.a. Silat Warriors: Deed Of Death – and now returns a few films later with another offering in the form of Walid, starring Megat Sharizal.
At its forefront, Walid, as a conceptual play on the definition of the word itself, hams it up as a nationalistic call to arms, using child trafficking and endangerment as part of its subject matter. Par for the course is the inclusion of migrants from other countries and families whose children don’t have the essential paperwork needed to matriculate, and some of the xenophobic backlash they tend to face from locals. That’s precisely the predicament Aisha (Putri Qaseh Izwandy) and her mother Kinang are in, as the film commences and introduces local volunteering village teacher, Walid, who decides to lend Aisha an olive branch, and a chance to learn more exclusively for her own betterment.
Aisha’s mother, Kinang (Feiyna Tajudin), whose pugilistic skills are just as fierce as her sharp tongue, is hesitant to trust Walid with her child at first. Eventually she acquieses to the idea, realizing what Walid sees in that Aisha, as he expresses it, “craves knowledge”. Little do either of them know, however, that whatever progress becomes of Walid’s mission to educate will soon turn into something dark and distressing when his students turn up missing.
Juxtaposed with the increasing presence of mysterious individuals coercing children in the village with candy, it becomes even clearer the moment Walid discovers that in the moment of trying to stop a classmate’s kidnapping, Aisha herself is taken. Cue Walid’s investigatory instincts and the actions of local law enforcement as it tries to infiltrate and uncover the kidnapping ring, led by Pak Ku (Namron). The final half of the film is chock-filled with swathes of action, twist reveals and dramatizations that all come to a head as the end of the film nears between each action scene, and each impasse.
The first half of the film is noticeably focused on the development between Walid and Aisha, while establishing the criminal element that lurks often in the dark backdrop of the story. Where it comes to a head is a moment you can easily identify with if you’ve seen Lee Jeong-beom’s The Man From Nowhere, as Walid puts its own touch on the scene, though the effect delivers just a little less emotively by comparison.
With Sharizal as the film’s starring component, it was a little suprising to learn that he doesn’t carry the entirety of the plot like with other films of its kind. As the film segues from its developmental phases and into more climactic territory, a bevy of characters suddenly begin to emerge taking on the traffickers to even the odds, even as the odds remain stacked against them between numbers and fighting prowess. One character surfaces from antagonist-to-protagonist in one of several last-minute twists amid the fisticuffs. Another supporting character who is used as for fighting and treated no better than his employers’ captives, gets his moment to acquire some much-deserved recompense during the film’s final action melee.
Some of these dramatizations and characterizations are edited midway into fight scenes, and in some cases as prologues to moments where bad guys are killed, which can be a little confusing if you’re not tuned in. The good news is here that in terms of the action, Bakar remains an amply-skilled a contender in his field an action director, joined his Silat Warriors co-stars, Tajudin who shepherds the film’s inaugural fight scene, and Khoharullah Majid, who gets a supporting role as a cop and also serves as the film’s fight choreographer. To that end, I even have my fingers crossed in wagering co-stars Fad Anuar and Jebat Zulfar as a few more of the film’s future action stars to mind in the years ahead.
With so many characters coming out of the woodwork in the second half, it’s easy to lose track of Sharizal as the film treads on. In a way, this is beneficial to the movie, particularly since Sharizal’s role wears reading glasses and is a bit on the portly side, which by all accounts if you’re one of the henchmen, kind of makes him a guy you don’t see coming, and I mean that literally. His first action scene is obscured behind a metal gate just after he pulls it down and lays several henchmen to waste while trying to find Aisha. The only sign of the devastation is the sound of banging and crashing behind and against the gate before the camera cuts back in with everyone incapacitated, save just one poor schmuck standing with both pitful dukes up and no chance in the world of winning.
Where you do get to see Sharizal in action is well into the second half, and for a guy his size, you can’t deny that Sharizal is a certainly an actor who can put the work in, and move with what an action scene demands. Here, Bakar employs the one unwritten caveat here for Southeast Asian martial arts actors in that some of them get a specialty weapon – something Gareth Evans employed handily in The Raid films. One actress dons a pair of straight knives in one of the film’s action scenes, and another uses butterfly knives. Sharizal, from the top of the film’s final action-packed hour, arms himself with two small axes, providing ample scenery to the blood and brutality in the action. It’s a matter of time, however, until he loses both axes and it’s down to the simplicity of bareknuckle fisticuffs and flying feet.
Within the first few years of writing on this platform back in my heydays of using Google’s Blogger medium, I made headway with a few stunt guys in discussing just why it is Malaysian action hasn’t made landfall in the world film markets. The response was equal to frustration and wishful thinking, and even I had moments where I didn’t think we would ever see films like Geran or other films surface.
It’s been a particularly rewarding period for me in that sense, especially with bearing witness to the emergence of Southeast Asian martial arts film titles. Like with all things, however, perfection takes time, and Bakar joins a cadre of directors like Adrian Teh, Syamsul Yusof, Michael Chuah and possibly others in making good on this agenda. For this, Walid isn’t without its frills, but it’s fun, escapist action and thrills with drama and poignance, and a cast full of Silat action artists to its merit, and all from a director who is not without promise.
