Stream It Or Skip It

Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Crossroads: One Two Jaga’ On Netflix, A Movie About Corruption And Living On The Fringes In Kuala Lumpur

Most people on this side of the planet have never been to Kuala Lumpur (we had a pen pal from there when we were kids, but that’s neither here nor there). So any movie that gives viewers a glimpse of what life is like in a faraway city like KL is always welcome. Well-known Malaysian director and actor Nam Ron takes a look at KL’s seedier side in Crossroads: One Two Jaga. Read on to find out about this interesting film…

CROSSROADS: ONE TWO JAGA: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: In some of the poorest areas of Kuala Lumpur, a man named Sugiman (Ario Bayu) does odd jobs for a local business owner Mr. Sarip (Azman Hassan). His sister Sumiyati (Asmara Abigail) has quit her job and wants to go back to Indonesia, but her boss has her passport. She insists that living in these shanty towns isn’t good for any of them, including Sugiman’s young son Joko (Izuan Fitri). Sugiman insists he’s fine, especially because he’s hanging out with Sarip’s son Adi (Amerul Affendi). Little does either of them know that Joko is helping Adi burn the body of an illegal worker who died accidentally on one of Sarip’s work sites.





Sugiman looks to Mr. Sarip for help. Sarip puts her up at his hotel for protection while he figures out who to bribe to get her out of the country, and next door she hears two teen boys being tortured for stealing money from their organized crime boss. It’s a tangled web that involves different levels of payoffs, especially when undocumented workers are held up at immigration.

In the meantime, Hussein (Zahiril Adzim) is on his first day as a detective with his new partner Hassan (Rosdeen Suboh), who he notices is not only jaded by family life, but has no problem taking money from people ferrying undocumented workers around. Hussein, on the other hand, wants to bust businesses who use undocumented workers, and gets increasingly frustrated when Hassan takes payoffs to fund a family vacation. Then they visit with the local crime boss, and Hussein is disgusted that his partner is completely in the crime boss’ pocket.





Then the cops run into Sumiyati, and the consequences of that chance encounter are disastrous for all involved.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: It’s like Training Day, with a bit of the multi-thread feel of Crash (the Oscar-winning one) thrown in.

Performance Worth Watching: Not sure why but we like Rosdeen Suboh as the corrupt cop Hassan. He basically yells his whole role, but he definitely portrays the world-weary, DGAF attitude of a cop who’s been part of a broken system for a long time.

Memorable Dialogue: The big boss tells Hassan a story about a dog he had who was too greedy, and who choked on a bone given to him as a gift, even though he was well fed. “Don’t be like him,” he eerily warns Hassan.





Single Best Shot: Director Nam Ron (who also plays local corrupt dignitary Datok) doesn’t infuse One Two Jaga with spectacular visuals; most of the movie has a sickly green filter placed on it to show how bleak the situation is. So when Sugiman is in the back of Adi’s truck, after barely escaping the cops, and a downpour starts, the shot is as good as this movie gets.

Sex and Skin: Nothing.

Our Take: Crossroads: One Two Jaga moves along at a quick pace: The film is only 80 minutes long. The problem is that Nam Ron lingers too long on some aspects of the story and not enough on others. Take the two teenagers we mentioned above. One is named Rico (Timothy Castillo), who has borrowed the money from the dignitary in order to pay his parents in the Philippines. But we don’t get much more about the story other than the fact that he gets caught, tortured and worse. Sumiyati’s story is told through how Sugiman tries to get her out of the country, but it doesn’t get very far. Most of the transactions between corrupt groups is treated in a very perfunctory way.





But we spend a significant portion of time following Hassan and Hussein around, showing Hussein increasingly stare into space as Hassan takes one bribe after another, even trying to solicit money from Sugiman, who obviously doesn’t have it, when they catch Sumiyati without documentation. We could have gotten the idea that Hassan was corrupt a lot sooner, and seen how their conflicting values play out earlier in the movie, instead of in the final ten minutes.

We also want to know more about Sugiman; why he continues to work for idiots like Sarip and Adi, and why he insists that Joko is fine in this environment, even though he has no schooling at all. But most of what his story involves is getting his sister out of Malaysia, which ultimately goes nowhere.

Believe us, we’re never proponents of making movies longer, but an extra ten minutes would have gone a long way to filling out some of these stories, especially if some of the extraneous scenes or stories hit the cutting room floor.

Our Call: STREAM IT, if only to get a gritty look at corruption and crime in Malaysia’s biggest city.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.





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Watch Crossroads: One Two Jaga on Netflix