Hati Merdeka in Review

A few days ago, I forget the day, I watched Hati Merdeka with my friends. Iis, Dyah, Astrid, Citra, and I were surprised when we got the reality that only a few people who watched this film. There’s only about 15 people including us and almost half of it was children. It is good when you see that children love watching local film which show the struggle of our independence but it very saddens when people in my age or in other words is adolescent are less interested in watching it. By giving this review I hope people will be curious and interested in watching this film.

Hati Merdeka, a film that is predicted will present an impressive end of the Trilogy Merdeka, which still produced by the same directors, Yadi Sugandi and Connor Allyn, is presented better than the two previous series. After the first series of the trilogy, Merah Putih, got so many critics for lack of action scenes, Darah Garuda which is the second series of the trilogy then came up with some improvements. Although Darah Garuda still showed a long drama stories, it was able to bring a bit of action and explosion scenes which were quite powerful to create audiences interest to look forward to the end of this trilogy that is Hati Merdeka. Hati Merdeka starts with the narration from Colonel Amir (Lukman Sardi), the same opening with Darah Garuda. Then the scene shifts to all the main characters of this film, Marius (Darius Sinathrya), Dayan (T. Rifnu Wikana), Senja (Rahayu Saraswati), Tomas (Doni Alamsyah), and Captain Amir, where they are planning a mission to retrieve a map from the Dutch colonizers headquarter. The tense of this film is straight up early when the mission of the main characters who are the guerrilla troop known by the colonizers. Moreover the audiences are directly surprised by the demise of Bayu (Aldy Zulfikar), one of the guerrilla troop personnel.

After the tension booster scene of this film in the beginning happened, the scene of the casts and the crews, the date and historic moments after the independence day of Indonesia, and also the core story of this film begin. Unlike the two previous series of this trilogy, guerrilla troop led by Colonel Amir is no longer attack the Dutch colonizers as a whole. They now have a duty to kill Colonel Raymer (Michael Bell), a Dutch army leader, who is narrated have commit to mass murder of the Indonesian in Bali and due to this thing he is considered as a war criminal. It leads to the pre-climax of this film when the command, Colonel Amir, refuses to accomplish this mission by resigning due to the death of Budi in previous mission.

The good aspect of this film is it effects are really like a Hollywood war movie. The shooting scene is really like watching Rambo. The cinematography by using underwater camera when Dayan, Tomas, Marius, and Senja swim at sea in order to escape from an attack from the colonizer’s gunboat is very beautiful and makes you amazing of Indonesian marine wealth. The weapons from World War II like the flamethrower and Shepherd Tank the Allied Forces’ flagship are also exist in this movie. It really gives you a sense of real war.

The bad aspects in this movie exist in the film script or the idea of this film and some scenes that don’t make sense. The depiction of each character looks so shallow and unsympathetic. No significant development of the acting. The main characters’ role seems only continue they role in the two previous series, in short they role is monotone. The main characters are set to be always safe under any circumstances, even when Marius stabbed with a dagger from his back penetrate into the front of his body near his heart and lung and he was lifted by the dagger, without any significant treatment, he can recover from his severe wound, even fought and beat each other with the Dutch army.

In conclusion, I personally rate this movie 7 because the bad aspects are eventful and the climax even makes me feels anti climax.