FOXTROT SIX: A Visually Ambitious, Yet Narratively Half-Baked Hollywood-Inspired Indonesian Action Movie

Genre: Action, Sci-Fi, Thriller

Produced by: Mario Kassar

Directed by: Randy Korompis

Written by: Randy Korompis

Production Company: MD Pictures, Rapid Eye Pictures

Starring: Oka Antara, Verdi Solaiman, Chicco Jerikho, Rio Dewanto, Arifin Putra, Mike Lewis, Miller Khan, Gisellma Firmansyah, Edward Akbar, Julie Estelle, Aurelie Moeremans, Cok Simbara 

Runtime: 114 minutes

SYNOPSIS: 

Set in the not-so-distant future of Jakarta, Indonesia, a rogue terrorist organization has emerged, threatening to take over the government. Former-soldier-turned-congressman Angga (Oka Antara) is left with no choice but to track down his old teammates, hence reassembling the elite task force called the Foxtrot Six. What starts off as just a routine mission grows more personal when Angga suspects that the organization might have something to do with his fiancée Sari’s (Julie Estelle) disappearance. 

REVIEW: 

In the Indonesian film industry, it is no longer a secret that its biggest ambition is international recognition. It is by no means saying that local recognition does not matter. After all, they’re still Indonesian movies, movies that are predominantly aimed at the Indonesian audience. With a wider release locally compared to the limited scale of an international release, it’s more likely to make most of its money through local theatrical chains. At the same time, one cannot deny the prestige that puts internationally-recognized Indonesian movies above the locally-recognized Indonesian movies. 

There have been several cases where the international exposure help bring much-needed local exposure to these movies, particularly those that might not have a strong chance of success via local exposure alone. Films like the Raid (2011) and the Night Comes for Us (2018) have reaped the rewards of international exposure, which sees the former become one of the most successful theatrically-released action movies in the local box office, and the latter, released via streaming, become one of the most-watched movies on Netflix. 

Referring back to the Raid and the Night Comes for Us, what do these two titles have in common?  Yes, they’re both action movies. Teenage dramas and horror movies might have been the signature genres for the local audience, but in the international eyes, people associate the Indonesian film industry with the action genre. And so, if they’re going to make their voices heard, they’re going to have to do it in an action-packed way. 

That’s where Foxtrot Six comes into the fold. Not based on any famous intellectual property, but rather a completely original script written and eventually directed by relative newcomer Randy Korompis, it should not have been a big deal. But a glimpse through the acting and producing talents involved suggests a different story. This movie’s cast list is essentially the who’s who in the industry: Oka Antara, Rio Dewanto, Chicco Jerikho and Julie Estelle, just to name a few. If Indonesia had an Avengers, then these names are without a doubt top of that list. Not to mention the most prestigious name in the project, Hollywood producer Mario Kassar, a man responsible for financing such big-budget action classics like the first three Rambo movies and the Terminator series. 

And with a budget of around 70 billion Rupiah (that’s 5 million US Dollars), by Indonesian movie standard, Foxtrot Six is one of the country’s most expensively-made movies. As of this moment, it doesn’t have an international release yet, so it has to rely on the local audience to build exposure. With the many big names as well as the many big financial and marketing risks in such an uncommon project, is it all going to pay off for the studio?  Is it a risk that’s worth taking for the audience? 

For the former, only the box office numbers can tell. For the latter though, Foxtrot Six is most certainly a risk that’s worth taking. It takes guts for a major studio to green light such a high-budget idea yet a genre that’s proven to be more of a hit-and-miss. It takes even bigger guts to get a marquee name like Mario Kassar to agree to throw in so much money to make it all happen. And just by managing to get it out in theaters, Foxtrot Six shows big guts. 

In a time when the industry is often accused of lacking ambition, Foxtrot Six subverts the stigma by proving that it does actually have ambition. As displayed by this movie’s technical achievement, it is one with very high ambition. In a time when the industry is often accused for a lack of trying, this movie should be applauded for at least trying to make something that’s different from most of the Indonesian productions that’s invading the theaters as of late. It couldn’t get any more different than seeing people wearing exoskeleton suits and invisible cloaks walk around the futuristic landscape of Jakarta. 

Name an Indonesian movie other than Foxtrot Six that features these two aforementioned things? That would be a very difficult question to answer since it has never been done before. And also, it finally addresses some of the filmgoers’ concerns that come with the industry’s more high-concept productions. Are the local special effect talents on par with Hollywood’s? That’s the high bar that most Indonesian movies are aiming for, a challenge that perhaps spooked the local filmmakers and special effect artist too much that they decide to settle for safeness. 

Only Korompis and Lumine Studio, the latter the special effect team behind Foxtrot Six, dare to answer to such challenge. Lumine’s special effect work here is far from perfect, but it is getting there alright. The way the digitized element of this movie look indicates vast progression from past attempts, in a way that’s as close to perfection as it can be. 

This movie’s version of men in exoskeleton suits, the grungy, muscular and just a bad-ass piece of machinery in every aspect, is truly a work of Hollywood-level professionalism, so immaculately-rendered in terms of its design and so brilliantly-animated in terms of its movement. Rarely is there a moment when these machines look in any way cheap or out-of-sync with its predominantly live-action environment, with the only exception maybe being the CGI when they fell to the ground. 

And the same goes with the way Lumine crafts the effects for the assassin character in an invisible cloak. Right from the moment the assassin introduces to the audience how his cloak work, one cannot help but watch in awe at the leaps and bounds an Indonesian movie’s special effect makes just through a piece of fabric, which is a massive compliment. Through masterful CGI wizardry, the movie succeeds in creating the illusion that what the audience is watching resembles something that’s real than computerized, even when the things that the eyes perceived as real involve fantastical moments like an assassin’s cloak fading in and out of his surroundings or the cloak’s invisible shadow zipping easily past an army of armed guards. In truth, most of this movie’s spectacular visual effect moments have a lot to do with the assassin and his invisible cloak in action. Any time the assassin and his cloak makes an appearance, it seizes every opportunity it had onscreen to steal the show from its lead heroes. 

Overall, it’s these neatly-done visual touches that make Foxtrot Six’s comic book-esque universe such a fascinating one, worthy of both a comic book and movie franchise expansion. 

But really, the real reason why people want to see Foxtrot Six in the first place are the action sequences. After all, why would MD Pictures go through the trouble of flying Mario Kassar to Indonesia? Kassar helped define the way filmmakers make Hollywood action movies back in the 80’s to the 90’s, and yes, he might be dealing with a different country, a different film industry altogether but the result is the same. Not necessarily a movie’s most creative mind, but there is no doubt that Kassar makes his presence felt throughout this movie. As an Indonesian movie, it’s groundbreaking, but as a Mario Kassar production, it hits all the familiar beats. 

Foxtrot Six is bombarded with the archetypal Mario Kassar action movie tropes, the muscled men in military suits, the in-your-face patriotic 80’s musical score, and the one liner-driven dialogue. If these elements aren’t Mario Kassar enough, this movie even has a villain (revealing so would be a spoiler) who referenced Rambo in a throwaway line of dialogue. 

That does not mean that Foxtrot Six is without any shred of Indonesian identity. It is still mainly an Indonesian movie featuring Mario Kassar, not Mario Kassar featuring an Indonesian movie, and there are certain aspects of the stunts here that look and feel like it’s fashioned by Indonesian hands. It cannot get more Indonesian than an action sequence involving macho men embroiled in a brutal mud wrestling –meets- 17^th of August-style-pole climbing race kind of game. 

Who is to say that Indonesian hands are bad? Any movie that’s choreographed by the Raid’s Yayan Ruhian can do no wrong. Ruhian’s touch does inject the more martial arts-driven action sequences with an extra pop, even if this movie doesn’t have as much martial arts as previous Indonesian action movies. 

It is a movie that chooses to settle things by a bullet to the head than the art of pencak silat. Whether the characters fight with hands or guns, Foxtrot Six remains a fun, bloody good time. Assigned with the hard 21 + rating by the Cinema XXI chain, it doesn’t hold back on the Indonesian-style grindhouse gore. In line with the Raid, one blow is as unapologetically violent as the next one. In the eyes of avid Indonesian action movie fans, the more violent, the better. 

If there’s any negative, the camerawork is a bit of a mixed bag. Every time it’s filmed in a normal frame rate, the action is easy to digest. Any time the frame rate slows down though, it becomes less so. 

For all its well-done visual presentation, Korompis’ screenplay is rather half-baked. It is a movie that isn’t short of ideas, yet focuses on the wrong story. It doesn’t help that the characters aren’t properly developed. They are just people walking around without any sort of arc or compelling personality. Look no further than the Foxtrot Six’s characterization.  

One cannot be faulted to think that a movie titled Foxtrot Six would focus on, well, the Foxtrot Six. Ironically, the script spends the least amount of time on the lead heroes. In movies like these, it’s all about the team dynamics, their relationship and conflict, yet here, it just isn’t as strong. 

It is a movie that expects the audience to believe in the team’s camaraderie and long history, but it is hard to buy into them when it seems hesitant to go through the process. It is a case of close, but not quite. It is a few scenes away from getting the team dynamics right. The movie could use a bit more time with Foxtrot Six, exploring how they go about their business. And these scenes don’t necessarily have to correlate with the main story. They only need to exist as means of fleshing out the team dynamics. 

With more polishing, it would have been a far more interesting movie, at least more interesting than Korompis’ choice for a main story. From its laborious opening sequence, Foxtrot Six indicates a movie that cares less about the Foxtrot Six and more about a forced romantic subplot involving Angga and Sari. Obviously, his intention is to give the hero some dramatic depth. However, it just doesn’t have a place here, and instead, slows down the pacing. Like the Foxtrot Six, the relationship isn’t well-developed enough to worth caring.

Foxtrot Six also seems to struggle with a consistent tone. On paper, it’s an action movie, but in practice, it tries to have its own cake and eat it too. It wants to be every genre in the world and achieving very little with each of the genre it’s going for. It’s not wrong to have a movie with multiple tones, and in today’s world, every movie needs to have that, but the way Korompis handles the multiple tones here create the impression of a movie that’s so confused about its own identity. It cannot quite decide whether it wants to be A or B.  What kind of an action movie does Foxtrot Six want to be? Does it want to be super serious like the Bourne movies? Or does it want to be jokier, tongue-in-cheek in the manner like the Expendables movies? 

Thematically, Foxtrot Six does have something much deeper to say. It is a movie that at its heart a human and political thriller, delving into relevant and close-to-life subjects like poverty and world hunger and imagining them existing in harsh, yet equally close-to-life scenario where they’re a byproduct of the figures of authority’s greedy desire for more power. All in all, these are serious stuffs, the kinds that are very real and deserving of more awareness. 

At the same time, it’s hard to take these themes seriously when that same movie features ridiculously dumb action sequences like a guy stabbing another guy to death with a toothbrush. Yes, this actually happened. A guy actually commits a murder via a stray toothbrush. Let that sink in. 

As usual, it’s a dish served with over-the-top brutality, complete with the sort of blood and gore and bone-crunching sound effects meant to shock the audience. Then again, a ridiculously dumb idea, as bloody as it’s done, remains a ridiculously dumb idea. As a result, this scene’s violence comes off as funny rather than shocking, further punctuated by a guy pulling out a one-liner that goes “clean up your teeth”. 

Foxtrot Six makes a rather interesting decision by having the entirety of its dialogue spoken in the English language.  It’s a rare, even awkward move, but not one that’s never been done before. Joko Anwar once experimented with such concept through Modus Anomali (2012). Though to be fair, Modus Anomali kept the English dialogue at a minimum, which makes the awkwardness of an Indonesian actor speaking in English throughout a movie seem less apparent.  

Foxtrot Six increases the volume of dialogue, only this time, its awkwardness is much more apparent. The actors are not the issue here. To the actors’ credit, they manage to work their way through the language barrier. Bear in mind, they’re given dialogues that are loaded with American slangs. And if that’s not difficult enough, the slangs are the types that are uncommon for English-speaking Indonesians. True, there are a few actors with thick local accent that make the slangs come out less natural, but in terms of pronunciations, they mostly hit all the right notes. 

The biggest issue here is the lack of synchronicity between the actor’s mouth movement and what comes out of it. In certain moments, there are a slight second or two delays between mouth movement and dialogue, where the dialogues might still go on but the mouth is no longer moving. In other moments, almost every dialogue sounds like they’ve been redubbed. And worst, they come off flat and robotic. What come out of actors’ mouth are flatter, robotic versions of their voice that lacks the resemblance to their real-life counterparts. If there is anyone whose mouth movement and words seem more synchronized, it’s easily Mike Lewis. 

As far as acting goes, there’s really not much that’s worth talking about. If there is ever any worry that these dramatic actors cannot pull off action sequences, Foxtrot Six serves as a strong proof that there’s another side to these actors that are legitimate action stars. It is hardly a surprising revelation, considering this movie has veterans from the Raid 2: Berandal (2014) as cast members. Oka Antara, one of the two Raid 2 veterans here, takes on the leading man role as Angga, Foxtrot Six’s leader, and his finest moments come whenever he’s kicking butt. He’s more convincing when he’s delivering a gunshot to the head than emotion. Same goes with Julie Estelle, the other Raid 2 veteran, who is on the same frequency of okay in this movie as Oka. 

As for the non-Raid veterans, there are Chicco Jerikho, Rio Dewanto, Arifin Putra, Verdi Solaiman and Mike Lewis who all play the supporting members of the Foxtrot Six. There’s no doubt that these actors can fire a gun and pull a punch, but that’s the extent of what they do here.  The best they can give are passable performances, which boils down to the script’s fault rather than the actors.  

CONCLUSION: 

Foxtrot Six is a retread to the old, 80’s Mario Kassar production, replete with ambitious world building, cool effects and no-holds-barred action, yet sadly lacking in character development, narrative coherence and convincing delivery of its fully English dialogue. 

Score: 6/10