Mat Kilau

This movie is shallow, peppered with preachy scripts and cliches.

It needs a better writer... Character building is almost non-existent. The protagonist appeared out of nowhere, was thrown into a leadership role and started preaching about nationalism and religion. This is followed by a cliche drama where another character is envious of the chosen leader.

The preaching doesn't end there. It kept reminding you that the British were evil and tried to convince the viewers how important nationalism & religion were to them. This was done over and over again

This makes the protagonist one dimensional and they wasted such a good talent on this. Some of the minor characters have better development than the protagonist.

It needs breathing room... Some of the scenes jump around too fast, it seems as though they were rushing it in the editing room. Perhaps to include more preaching into the scenes?

Need some realism.... The costumes are inaccurate. Modern clothing and clothing items were used and its so obvious, it will throw historians & anthropologist into a fit.

The British soldiers are filled with entirely 'Punjabis'. Obviously, this wasn't the case in reality.

To create epic fight scenes, they have Yayan Ruhian. But it seems they wrote his character as an after thought.

Conclusion... If you don't care about good storytelling, character development, screenplay and accuracy, you will most likely like this movie.

If you appreciate good filmmaking and who goes to film festivals, you will want to skip this.

This is literally the worst film from the Director, his previous films were watchable and enjoyable. This one fails so badly till you legit have to force yourself to watch till the end. Could've improved a lot of things but they've decided to leave it that day!

Overall watch at your own risk, skip this if you want to.

All the weaknesses have been mentioned here by other reviews. Screenwriting, jump cuts, camera works etc etc.

My main complaint is how SY ended his film. It just end abruptly, like TOO abrupt. I'm all for film that ended on cliffhanger but there's literally certain style and technique to leave an impact to the viewer not just fade to black just after nothing remarkable happened before that. When the credits kicks in I'm just like "That's it?". Poor way to end a film that supposed to be an historical epic.

The thing about Syamsul is he's a visionary directory, talented but he clearly needs to focus more on the writing department or just get someone who's better at this.

Mat Kilau has its moment that you can truely feels its sheer epic scale and heightened your spirit of nationalism. The fight sequences were fairly good and really embodied the greatness of Silat. To summarize, Mat Kilau is fast, action packed and straightforward formulaic biography that able to cater most Malaysians taste.

Now the writing... The script is just lackluster and have Syamsul's trademark all over it. It's very preachy and loud telling you "Get up and fight for your country and religion!". Is that bad? No, not at all. I understand the intention of sending some messages to the viewer (and it clearly worked). But the gripe of having this kind of script is that it makes the character seems unnatural and very one dimensional.

The pacing problem . It moves from scene to scene way too fast that makes me lost the sense of time. And leaves the story unable to breath on its own. This is likely a screenplay issue than editing.

Mat Kilau, the titular role is very one dimensional and there isn't any interesting arcs to this character even though Adi Putra nails the character well enough. Even the character played by Beto Kusyairi has more depth to it.

Some side plots and minor characters are hugely underdeveloped that they suddenly appeared near the end of the film. I don't understand if Syamsul intended it to be a surprise or something but the outcome are meh without any of those build up.

Overall, its a decent watch. Good effort by the team. Go watch and support Mat Kilau at the theatres.

Theres a whole debate in a movie fan group over this film. Believe or not you can't give any negative opinion over this film because people regarded this as a sort of masterpiece and people will tell you in the face that you have to make your own movie before you can give any criticism for Mat Kilau.

Tbh im never a fan of SY's works. He's like Zack Snyder except that he is way worse than him. He's all about style no substance but he got lot of fans that backed him up.

I still paid the tickets to see this. Hoping that Syamsul will surprise me because the trailer and the hype is kind of promising. But no. This is like KL Gangster except that now Jai is Mat Kilau. I wouldn't call Mat Kilau as a historical film or biography. It's more like Syamsul only use the name to deliver his own ideology or message just like he did in his movies before. The formula doesn't work here, it really doesnt. The actors kept shouting motivational quotes to your ear from beginning to end. Are there even real script here? This is the best he can do? I heard that the writers wrote the script with the messsage comes to their mind first. This is where the problem begins. The writers didnt even bother to create something that normal person would say.

Did any of the cast and crew watch the movie before release it on cinema? Did any of them even realise how disjointed the movie feels? The transition is freakin awful. It felt like some kind of rough cut that supposed to sit in editing room.