It's a wild world, out there!

Jalan Pintas (Short cut, Malay, 2011)

This Malaysian film is banned by FINAS but had to be nominated for 2012 Puchon Fantastic Film Festival to be noticed. The reason for its ban is probably due to the copious use of unnecessary foul four lettered Malaysian words and the protagonist's given name in the credit is Najib Razak. In the movie itself, he introduces himself as Bakar (Burn) Razak! Every now and then you see snippets of government logo which seem contradictory to the story, as if in a mocking manner.

And the movie screams of nihilism from every angle - a hostile urban environment streaming with gangsters, loafers and mad men, people in power who nonchalantly practise favouritism and nepotism, town folks are rude and that the country is a living hell for an educated young man with no connections.

It narrates how possibly Bakar's life would have been if he had taken a short-cut to attend his job interview. At the end of the day, both roads lead to path of destruction.

The story would perhaps remind you of 'Sliding Doors' narrating a parallel universe where things may happen differently. For a Malaysian, the style of story-telling is quite unique in that the story is told in flash backs and present time in sequence but the essence is quite obvious. 

Bakar, a kampong boy with an engineering degree and good grade, leaves the comforts of his village to seek for job and greener pastures in KL. What meets him is heartaches, unpaid rent, unrealistic employers and dead ends at interviews.

A some what immature Bakar, it seems, cannot take the injustices that happens to him, in front of him, lying down. He fights back, sometimes foolishly to devastating outcomes. 

It is refreshing to see a fresh angle of filmmaking coming from our local boys instead of the usual run-of-the-mill condescending boy-meet-girl, love failure, decadent behaviour, repentance kind of story for the masses. Of course, the powers that be are not going to kindly accept the negative depiction of our beloved land even though it is not far from the truth. Living for the common people is indeed becoming a struggle as the inequality between the haves and have nots widens and unlike most developing countries, our middle class shrinks.