Air Force: The Movie - Selagi Bernyawa

Good movie!

Nice movie

Lots of action, but also lots of melodrama. The special effects are actually not that bad and the units and equipment in this tale in a fictitious country are pretty on accurate for the Malaysian side. Problem is the story is flat. There's the humanitarian doctor. The "critical of the military" reporter. The token Whiney character. The stoic commander and his band of hyper emotional commandos. Of course there's a fairly chaste love story and the rivalry between brother in law and brother in said chaste relationship. I will admit I had to fast forward a bunch of parts since there was a lot of excessive emotional outbursts superfluous to the story at hand. The movie reminded me of the worst of modern Chinese and Indian cinema with it's kind of campy hyper patriotism, cardboard characters and boring "mission accomplished"-"roger that" type dialogue coupled with a lot of sentimentality.

The storyline is quite simple, straight-forward and easy to understand. It's pretty much like those Hollywood military movies, it just requires a reason to be attacked, and there it comes all the attacks go on the troops! The pace is alright, with actions here and there to keep the momentum going. There are sufficient action scenes to keep audiences entertained. BUT none is great and 'memorable' enough to impress audiences. Besides, with the movie name - AirForce, I expected to see more fighting and defence in the air, BUT it's just about 20~30% in the air and 70~80% on the ground (PASKAU squad). The character development is good in a way that within a short moment, audiences could see the different backgrounds and characters of each PASKAU member. BUT with their actions in there, I started to suspect their maturity and mental stability for such an important mission. E.g. Rushing to save a child, while putting all team members at risk and so on. A few flaws are picked up as follows: Firstly, some fighting scenes are really shaky, e.g. The fight in the tunnel. I could hardly see anything due to the poor lighting + shaky camera, and felt rather dizzy, as such I gave up watching for that 1 minute!! Gosh! Give me a BREAK!! Secondly, the long-haired villain seems to be really BAD and CRUEL! I expected to see a great fight between Lejen and him! BUT.. it ended up with a 'close-door fight', and audiences didn't know what happened, and somehow he died!!! Hello~~ if that's the case, then pls waste time building his character as if he is the real BAD-ASS at the first place! Thirdly, the jet-fight scene is great! BUT I could not tell which was the Malaysian jet-fighter & which is the enemy's. If that part could be made clearer, it would be great! Finally, from the backstory, the movie was supposed to show the restoration of friendship or reconciliation between Mantis and Zaf. BUT it went missing! And there is no further story about it! For a local production, I gave 7.0/ 10. Everything is intact! It gives you all that you want to see! It's worth your money to support a local movie like this!!

Have to be a bit ruthless here since this movie potrays one of our elite special forces units, PASKAU. For a start, the way team leader conducts himself throughout the mission is so pathetic it's a wonder how he even managed to pass the Selection. And other team members? Special units won't go around screaming their lungs out while escaping heavy fire, they won't stand up in open space on top of high points where enemies could see them from miles away, they won't even move let alone continue standing up when a sinper was detected in the vicinity. And many more. It's all wrong here. It's more like Mat Kilau playing Maverick in another version of Tears of the Sun.

Whew... this review is gonna be hella long so bear with me, I'm very hyperfixated rn. I'll be explaining the plot as best as I can recall This movie follows a PASKAU team having to survive Namburi, a place where the Northern and Southern militia are fighting. Their plane back to Malaysia was shot down by the Northern, who during a ceasefire, was upset that they were pulling back. The survivors now needs to find a way to contact help... (Mind you, I might get the plot a little bit wrong because, for me, everything happened too fast. I had to ask my brother to recount what happened and why it did.) As the TUDM learns about the disaster, they set up a rescue mission in which they select Zafran ("Mantis") their best pilot to lead and Adib's brother-in-law, to clear the space for the helis to save them. Okay, so now, my experience; the movie is enjoyable and you can feel for them. The actors does a great job in bringing their character out and they're unique, not bland with a one-way mind. Me, personally, when there's a corny line, it throws me off the whole movie, but this one does it at the right time. You understand what they feel; the panic they have when the plane was shot; Matno being shook as a civilian, very close to death if he didn't jump; the fart joke to lighten Matno up; their fear when Lejen got dragged down by the militia; the relief when they're finally rescued. But here's the problem... I feel like a few things were rushed and some plots cut so they could fit in the 105 minutes. Zaf (Zafran) and Adib - We segue 8 years into the past and see Zaf unhappy with his childhood friend, Adib as they had promise to fly together, but he decided to join PASKAU instead. Their friendship ends and back to present, we see Zaf learning about their plane being shot down and he's worried for Adib's safety, showing that he still cares for him. He requests to be put into action to save his brother-in-law. So Zaf gets on his "calibrated-it-to-suit-you" jet and sets off to clear the area for safer rescuing. Cue intense jet scenes and a sad one next. After all this, we never really see them reconciling. It cuts to the funeral and that's it; I thought the point of their backstory was to see them reunite and reconcile, even for a little bit. Not motivation for him to want to hop on the rescue operation. Zafran - His character's got so much, but we barely see it. His scenes with Marya was baffling to me; he goes to her all heated that she runs the investigation case and she talks some sense in him and left. You start to wonder, "ooh, will it be romantic?" and even if it's not, it's fine, we can see them be friends after all. No. Her demeanor changed suddenly without warning and she's super friendly with him and calibrated the SUKHOI for him. ...okay, but will they do anything more with them? No again, their storyline ends there. We see no development between them. Even the fact that he flew the jet low, scaring civilians, he faces no consequence from that action. It's just a random plot to make it meaningful? Idk where they were trying to go with that. Layla - When she appeared, I thought she'd be someone important to the story since they focused on her face a few times, but she's just a side character. Air base capture - So they've made their way to the air base, only to find it compromised. Alright, wait... why are they showing the people indoors looking for items? Could that endanger them if they continue trying to reach it? No. If you can ignore the parts that doesn't make sense sometimes, then you'll find it good because I did. It's a good movie with a couple mistakes that's easy to ignore/overlook if you're more of a casual viewer. If you're pro-military, you'll like it. Jet go woosh? Yes, jet go woosh.

Low flying reprimandation? This yells Top Gun for when Maverick did his fly past! Couldn't they come up with something better ? What's with the English + bahasa mixed dialogue? Call signs were too corny.. lejen? SUPER CORNY DIALOGUE ALL THE WAY! Tuan Rahim? He seems the most relaxed amongst the entire crew that tried to portray some sense of urgency. I didn't know wether to cringe or cry looking at his facial expression!! Oh and another thing.. mid air refuelling when the jets just took off? They just had to dump everything into this show right? Plus points for the enemy forces , north and south. They had a more realistic presence.

I want to say that this is the best foreign movie I have seen in a long time. The cameras and cinematography deserve an award for accuracy of an account of what they exposed and it's nothing more than a perfection of quality, but it is very accurate to the narrative of what happened to these people. All the emotions are surfaced into the situation of killed or be killed in this civil war, if freedom or tyranny result. The camera continues to collect the heroism of what the peasants are fighting for and consistently expands on the fight of truth or Democracy versus subjugation. The actors were great in portraying their contributions to the drama between their acting and the cameras were able to make sense of a civil war destroying a country of non-violent people who only want live and give the same respect to their children or die in vain. The acting met the moments, and the cameras were too perfect to catch the moments, and the direction was extremely excellent. I equate this movie to a higher Hollywood standard.

What's up with that 5.7 rating on IMDb? I'll give an 8.3. Great effort from the entire production team and casts. Proud to watch it at the big screen. Much better than Paskal. Negative comments aside, I think Nas-T and Adi Putra did a great job being the two characters with the most time on camera. Aiman Hakim this time around, showed his serious side and commendable acting for his character. The movie reminds me of "Behind Enemy Lines". A good film to be watched, even with young kids. So that they can know and appreciate the role of our frontliners of defence. Ignore the unfair rating. Go watch!

One of the best survival military film in Malaysia. Give insight of the real war with outstanding and believable fictional country. Very fast paced, action packed film but still focusing on each of the character. Stellar performance by all cast. Look at their eyes while watching. You can feel the fear, hopelessness and desperation to survive. Intense tension build up one scene after another with oustanding music score. This film is a great introduction to Royal Malaysia Air Force. What I love most about Air Force The Movie: Selagi Bernyawa is how they humanized armed forces. They are certainly not super solder. It feel relatable because as human, we certainly have emotional baggaged and flawed. Subtle but brilliant scene on PTSD and Autism awareness. I've watched 3 times and some scenes keep on surprising me. Hope the production will consider a prequel or mini series!