Superhero movies may be the buzz in this day and age, but you don’t have to look too hard to find that martial arts genre films still have an audience of their own. And thankfully, we have folks like Street Society and Badoet helmer Awi Suryadi in our corner with his own efforts to keep the action alive with Unleashed, which boasts a riveting and otherwise solid concept that should easily be workable for a series or a feature film, and it reads a little like this:
HANNA comes from a prominent Malay family. Her late father was the founder of the famous Rangkuti Capoeira Center. One of the trainers is her brother, JUNA, who also happens to be a national athlete. Surrounded by such an environment, Hanna grew up to be a popular and slightly spoiled girl, who sees life through a rose-tinted glass.
Rose-tinted glass is what LAURA never had. There is always a bully who torments her just because of her Chinese-Indonesian lineage. In fact, a fight with one of these bullies at school is what brings her to the attention of WILLEM, her physical education teacher. Seeing her penchant for fighting, Willem—who is also a mixed martial athlete—offers Laura to train in a gym that he frequented. Laura said yes—and finds her calling.
Both Willem and Juna are participants in the increasingly popular National Mixed Martial Arts Competition. One night, they meet inside the octagon. The fight is brutal yet captivating. Juna’s capoeira moves find a formidable opponent in the form of Willem and his jujitsu skills. But this fight was not meant to end well. At the fifth round, tragedy strikes. Juna, who later was found to have a rare heart disease, collapsed. The 27-year-old man died on his way to the hospital, with Hanna at his side.
This tragedy changes Hanna’s life. She decides to make Juna’s unfulfilled wish to become the champion of the MMA Competition come true. To realize this, she must make a 180-degree turn—embrace her family’s legacy of fighting and unleash the fighter inside her.
Laura and Hanna finally find a common ground—one that is built upon their love for martial arts, and ambition to be the best. Destiny will bring them together inside the octagon. Who will become the winner? Will it be Laura, who fights against convention, showing that even the minority can overcome the obstacle? Or will it be Hanna, who fights to keep the fire of her family’s legacy burning?
Find the answer in Unleashed, the first Indonesian-made limited series that goes deep into the world of mixed martial arts—an epic tale of rivalry and ambition, a juxtaposition of spectacular fights and touching human drama.
