Bandit review: one long, desperate night in Bali

Brian L. Tan’s neo-noir about an ex-bandit dragged back into crime is less about the chase than about who pays for it, and it’s all the better for that

Two broke friends in Bali steal an abandoned G-Wagon and find a dead body in the trunk. It’s a pulpy setup, but Bandit is after something heavier than the chase. Desperation can put people in the worst situations imaginable, and sometimes it isn’t them who bear the cost but the people they love most. This Indonesian neo-noir thriller is driven by emotion more than action. The action is there, it just isn’t the core of the film, so don’t go in expecting something as fast and relentless as The Raid.

But if you like narrative-driven stories, it’s absolute entertainment. It sets up its plot well and holds your attention from the opening sequence. One caution before I go further: I’ll steer clear of spoilers as best I can, but in a film this driven by its narrative, even some of the setup can sound like one.

The film follows Gatra (Wafda Saifan Lubis), an ex-bandit scraping by in Bali who is pulled back into a life of crime, violence and pursuit once that theft goes wrong. Gatra and his best friend Tiar (Roy Sungkono) find themselves up against a notorious threat that promises to kill them before dawn, and their desperation quickly shifts from making money to simply staying alive.

The chaos soon spreads to the people Gatra and Tiar know and care about, including Gatra’s wife Maya (Claresta Taufan Kusumarina), who is in the late stages of pregnancy. Maya is probably the only character you truly feel for, given how innocent she is in all of this. That’s largely Kusumarina’s doing, because the script gives her almost nothing to do. Maya waits at home, bleeding more often than she should be, worrying that Gatra is hiding something from her, until the plot needs her as leverage. It’s the film’s weakest thread: the person it makes you care about most is the one it bothers with least.

The friendship at the center is where the film is strongest. Wafda Saifan Lubis and Roy Sungkono are close friends off screen, and they came to the film as a pair: they auditioned together, shooting their tape at a bar. It shows. Their comfort with each other lives in the small character details, the kind of shorthand you can’t fake. Call it styling or casting brilliance, but if I were reading Bandit as a novel, this is probably how I’d picture Gatra and Tiar, and that’s the biggest compliment I can think of.

Then there’s Beni, the villain. T. Rifnu Wikana plays him with real restraint: the menace is all in his expressions and his line delivery, and he never once looks like he’s trying too hard. His action scenes are well choreographed too.

From a bird’s-eye view, the plot of Bandit might sound simple, but it grows genuinely captivating the deeper you get into it. Much of that comes down to its director, Brian L. Tan, who cut his teeth in visual effects on studio films such as X-Men: First Class and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo before directing the short Anomaly and the TV movie Murder Below Deck. As the film unfolds, you see how sharp his vision is. It isn’t just the story that holds you; it’s the sense of direction that breathes so much life into it.

Because the story plays out over a single night, Bandit also works as a tour of Bali after dark, and a gorgeous one. The island’s night views make stunning backdrops, and the chase carries you right across the city. According to its makers, it’s even the first film to feature Garuda Wisnu Kencana, Bali’s colossal statue. This isn’t the Bali of beach postcards. It’s the island lit up at night, beautiful and out of reach, seen through the eyes of two men who can’t afford any of it.

Working with cinematographer Austin Ahlborg, Tan makes almost every shot count, and it’s no surprise the film took Best Cinematography at the Catalina Film Festival. The colors shout the tone of the film, and the music underlines the mood of every scene. The best example is a club fight, when Gatra goes looking for Suroto and has to fight his way through Suroto’s goons to reach him. It’s trippy and soaked in color, and it reminded me of the nightclub fights in the John Wick films. For a film that keeps its action in the background, it’s the moment that shows what Tan can do when he lets it loose.

Until now, I was only really familiar with Indonesian horror, and I’ve followed everything directors like Joko Anwar have made. Bandit has given me a new favorite filmmaker working in the country’s cinema: Brian L. Tan. Festival juries seem to agree. The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Best Narrative Feature at Dances With Films in Los Angeles and Best Foreign Film at the Burbank International Film Festival, and it earned seven nominations at FilmQuest, including Best Director, Best Screenplay and Best Actor.

A note on how this one reached me: Bandit was submitted to CineCinnati by Tara McNamara, the film’s co-producer and a critic in her own right. She reviews films for Common Sense Media, is a member of the Critics Choice Association and is a Tomatometer-approved critic on Rotten Tomatoes. As I do with every submission, I watched it in one uninterrupted sitting, phone in the other room. For Tara, Bandit is a first feature producing credit, and a strong one to start with.

If you want my honest opinion, it’s a clear four out of five. It looks gorgeous, the plot is strong, and even the side characters are interesting, the villain included. Beyond Maya, my one real reservation is the ending, which could have been less predictable. From the very start, the film keeps exposing Gatra’s weak spots, above all Maya, and keeps deepening your attachment to her. You don’t need to be a genre veteran to read that signal: most audiences will sense that something is coming for her long before it arrives.

Bandit doesn’t reinvent the crime thriller, and it doesn’t try to. What it does is make you feel what desperation costs the people standing closest to it, and it does that with real style and heart. I saw the ending coming. I still couldn’t look away, and whatever Brian L. Tan makes next, I’ll be watching.