Ever since Dain Said's highly-anticipated sophomore effort BUNOHAN (known internationally as RETURN TO MURDER) has made fascinating round in last year's prestigious Toronto Film Festival, this locally-made movie had been earning high praise from reputable top critics especially Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. And here it is -- let me just say BUNOHAN is simply a unique effort unlike most locally-made movie you often seen in the cinema. It's a kind of genre-defying movie that is deeply poetic and not the kind of a typical kickboxing movie you might expect at the first place (thanks to the misleading trailer campaign). Mind you, BUNOHAN is strictly an art-house effort that is hardly mainstream and might bore off many casual viewers who are particularly impatient with meditative plot structure. It's certainly admirable, but not nearly enough to rank this as one of the best Malaysian movies ever made...

Read more at http://caseymoviemania.blogspot.com/2012/04/bunohan-2012.html

It completely blew me away. If you think Malay movies are the sort of mediocre stuff (I wanted to use a much stronger and impolite word) that the likes of David Teo churns out (Mami Jarum, I'm Not Single and all that rubbish), Dain Said represents the other end of the scale. It's been a very long time since I've seen a movie that stays with me for a long time after watching it. Claude Berri's Jean de Florette (though of a completely different genre) was one of those. I'm also getting this terrible urge to watch Bunohan again. This time I'm going to watch it with my wife. I didn't bring her as I thought the violence might be a bit too much but having watched it, I would say its poetic beauty transcends its brutality. The pace is very slow and restless. You're not quite sure what's going on. Or where the movie is heading. Until the very end. And even then you're not quite sure whether you got all of it. It is also steeped in culture. A glimpse of a remote corner of Malaysia that you rarely get to see. Strong performances all round, particularly Faizal Hussein, Zahiril Adzim, Pekin Ibrahim, Tengku Azura and Namron. Even Hushairy Hussin as Jolok, the local sleeze. Dain Said must have clocked in many hours at the repertory cinemas (I recall him saying so in an interview) and the influences certainly show. The last time I felt like this was after seeing Andrei Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice. I'm going for a second viewing.

To be honest, I never enjoyed watching Malay movie as the story of them are quite boring. But this movie is against all of them.

I saw the movie at premium show. It was good. The plot is nice, actors are well chosen. In terms of cinematography it is quite interesting, the angels are nice. It shows truly Malaysian village life. If you would have a chance to live in Malaysia, this movie totally makes sense. I liked the flow of the story and the way Dain, the director, directed this movie.

On the downside, There is lots of dialog could have removed. Some shots are long, IMHO. The fight scenes are OK. As a person always enjoy martial arts movie, I expected actors while having fights, they would have battle more aggressive. I liked those fighting scenes anyway.

Thumps up!