Or was it Putera? In this day and age of googling and Whatsapping 20 friends for quickfire opinions... no, I just can't be bothered. If Shuhaimi Baba is one of the best filmmakers we've got, then I'd rather we don't make films at all.
- The then Toh Puan Rahah. I found her to be attractive, with such an alluring smile. Which is odd, because she's not supposed to look late-20s/early-30s. Why were all the women that age, when one by one their husbands died? I can understand the need to make actresses today look pretty; and Toh Puan Rahah was known to be pretty. At least make her look milfy then? I don't know--just pretty but not that young? Toh Puan Rahah (whoever the hell played her) was such a pointless character in the film. She's the spoilt pretty wife getting presents for ¾ of the film, then poof! she's a worried, crying wife/widow for the final ¼. Granted, BAKTI and all that was only during Tun Dr. Siti Hasmah's time, but for fuck's sake, couldn't you at least show more dynamism in her?
- The cars. Fucking hell, the cars. The intro scene had an old Merc. Fitting for pre-Proton era leaders. Then the shoot out scene which was supposedly in the 1970s had a W-124 E-Class (launched in 1985), with a suspicious-looking cardboard box for a front grille. The 1975/76 London scene had a cab without the French doors; in its place was the new model introduced in 1997. The licence plates were all today's white plastic letters and numbers glued on black plastic plates, much unlike our grandparents' embossed besi keping plates. How do you spend millions on a film and just not do the research any idiot (not unlike me) can do with fucking Wikipedia? Or common sense? You thank all sorts of people who lived in that era for consulting for the film, and still you use modern lorries for the angry mobs.
- And how do you make a film about 13 May 1969 and not get your angry mobs right? They were laughing, they were smiling, some didn't even know what the hell they were shouting. Did they not want the acting mobs to suddenly become real angry mobs? At least show them with torn shirts/songkoks. Show some realism to make us live the moment; instead of having many of us focus on the fact that he's probably paid RM50 to have F&N Sirap Ros poured on him for 10 seconds of rolling around writhing in pain.
- Which brings me to the extras. The kids given a lift by Tun Razak were so stiff you'd think they'd had a gun pointed at them. Or their teddy bears. Not a single one of the UM and ITM extras had 60s or 70s haircuts/dos. They were in V-necks, skin-tight jeans, low-cut jeans, mohawks... Simply put, they were your average hipster college student. This is extremely apparent in the scene when the Malays are being ambushed in the cinema. Mahathir (let's face it, he was an extra) is the only one with 'proper' sideburns (even that looked so fake it could fall off). What happened to your pak cik in Pagoda t-shirts and kain pelekat? Where's the 60s groove? The bell bottoms and the long hairs? Closer to home--what about men sitting at a kopitiam? Or at least street peddlers? Come on!
- The cinema scene. When all the Chinese had left, and the camera zoomed out to show only Malays remain, I looked around me and noticed pretty much the same thing (and there was no writing on the screen in Chinese telling the Chinese to get out).
- So that's what TTDI did. Did they forget him in our history books? Surely even those UMNO members with the most rose-tinted glasses would not want his contributions to go unnoticed? I mean, what do most people think of when they think of Tun. Dr. Ismail? Pasar Besar? Rasta? Artisan Roast? You can see how emotional Tun Razak got when he died; how adamant the PM was for his most trusted ally and friend to be buried in Makam Pahlawan. Yet that bromance was largely unexplained; it made Tun Razak look a bit silly getting angry about where to bury someone. Effectively, you portray Tun Razak and the Doc as just two dying leaders hiding their illness from each other.
- Najib, in this film, took off his glasses twice, and was told to bring Nazir to London. Najib is the Orang Kaya Indera Semantan (or something like that)--a hereditary Dato'-ship bestowed upon his family by the Sultan of Pahang nine or ten generations ago. The title was immediately his when his father died, him being the eldest son. When Najib dies, his eldest son gets it. Yet the film portrays his younger brother Jo as the stalwart son, as the responsible one, as the one who was there when his father fell ill, the one who said good-bye, the one who was given all the advice, the one who knew of the illness, the one who heard PM and the Doc talk about 'stuff'. You'd have expected Jo to be the one who would go on to be PM instead of Najib. Before yesterday, I didn't even know there were other siblings apart from Najib and Nazir. Yet Najib only took his glasses off. Twice.
- Did our leaders really speak English that badly? Surely after all the years in London (seriously, sikit-sikit pergi London), they spoke very well. I blame the current crop of actors for their appalling pronunciation.
- And what is it with people being sick? Yes, the film was about Tun Razak and Tun Dr. Ismail both keeping their illnesses secret, while stabilising the country. But that Dato' that suddenly blacked out during the riots? If someone passes out, you call for help while you help him. You don't go full retard and start your own angry mob yelling "DATO' DAH PITAM! DIA DAH PITAM!" Exactly like your criticisms of angry mobs, you wont achieve anything at all.
- The tutor-student clique: Yes, how annoyingly muhibbah. Johan, I think, looks like a guy from work. Za's jeans were low cut enough that you could see her panties at one point (I thought that trend only started in the late 90s). Ms. Whatsherface's jeans were a bit too tight in the banjir relief scene--they were modern Levi's and you can see the red label. Why? Also, she and Alan would rather drive out in the open in a Malay kampung on May 13, instead of staying indoors after given protection by a trusted friend's family. For that alone, they should have been angry mobbed. And when they were indeed angry mobbed, they only inched their car forward getting it smashed and bashed. You're not blocked on all sides. You have a lorry-full of men who want to get you, yes. You couldn't honk or rev or scare them to make way? What would you do: drive slowly, or pedal to the metal?
- The reprimanded university girls: Surely no one reacts like that? While the disciplinary guy yells at you, you talk to each other? "DO YOU WANT TO BE EXPELLED? NO MINI SKIRTS!" and then all of 'em pull their skirts in a vain (and poorly acted) attempt to cover their knees. Right.
- The subtitles were appalling: Capitalisation, comma, inverted comma, quote marks all wrong. Kejap datin, kejap Datin. When people spoke Chinese, you had English and Malay subtitles that looked like one Manglish sentence. And they just switch between places and times, and only sometimes tell you time and place. At least once, they cut to a man talking and closed in on his face, without really letting us know who the hell he is.
- The make-up: Blood still looks like F&N Sirap Ros. White hair still looks like talcum powder poured over their heads and misai. I liked Tun Rahah's lipstick though--always a seductive red.
- The CGI or green screen, as well as the lighting: Why is it the streets of KL are brighter than my office? I understand you use lighting to ensure proper exposure and whatnot for your film, but berpada-pada lah kalau ya pun. The walk along the Serpentine looked so bad you'd actually think you're in the 70s because of quality of green screen-ing. Susah sangat ke?
- What the fuck was that plastic trophy behind Hussein Onn's office desk? It looks like something you get when you win an state MSS competition.
- The teacher and his tie: That scene at the end was a bit off. So he was given a new tie by Tun Razak, leading to him meeting Tun Razak again at the beginning, leading to him being an office boy in JPM? That wasn't very clear.
- The FELDA tractor boys chasing communists: It's bad enough that the communists had pristine uniforms--did they have laundry service in the jungles of Pahang? When two commie guerrillas tie your friend to a tree and beat him up, then behead another friend, then shoot you (with rifles, no less), of course you step on the accelerator of your tractor and chase them back into the jungle, yelling "rempuh! rempuh!" Any one would've done that.
- The youth shot for smearing red paint: Did the police just shoot anyone with red paint, assuming they were commies?
- Where is the romance in making a historical flick? Especially one of your childhood? If I made a film about the 90s or 2000s, I would have as many cultural references as possible. Walkmans (Walkmen?), CDs, baggy jeans hip-hop culture, BSB and Spice Girls, big thick hair. They rightfully had some scenes with old Malay songs on the radio, but surely there should be some Beatlemania, Elvis or Pop Ye Ye? You make a film about the 60s and 70s and you couldn't even bother to get companies to make retro tin can labels or packaging? At least reproduce some famous billboards. Show us the old spelling of BM (they did, but not enough!). Only Tun Razak spoke what I think is the slang of that era: "khawatir" for one. Everyone else spoke exactly like we do now.
- Fire in the hole! at Jalan TAR: SHIOK TRADING, really? You couldn't choose shops with 60s era signages to blow up? Of some of the pretty well maintained ones (Capitol or Coliseum come to mind), you just had to pick the one with the big ass light box sign with modern day spelling, address and phone numbers?
- And the shootings, bombs and grenades: None of these were mentioned in our textbooks. This must mean either the film is lying or our textbooks are. I mean, in our textbooks it's always communist insurgents shooting people in the villages or at the edge of the forests--never a hitlist and the assassination of two IGPs and others, and most definitely not the bombing of Tugu Negara. How have we not learned that? Either way, someone has to get their shit together.
- I'm sure your facebook feeds or any dodgy blogs (yes, yes, fuck you) will show the various other oversights. A Proton Iswara Aeroback, a 2013 road tax, an aircond compressor, a plaque with Mahathir signing as PM while Tun Razak sits across it. You'd think they did it for the lolz so we can play "hey that's inaccurate" while watching.
