Disappointing
Summary
Legend of Gatotkaca is overlong and the fight scenes are at times confusing to make out what’s going. It has a few fun moments and Yayan Ruhian is always a welcome addition but even he can’t save this from being forgettable.
Plot: After witnessing the shocking murder of his best friend by a masked assassin with terrifying superpowers, Yuda stumbles upon a secret prophecy long concealed by powerful people. After unlocking dormant abilities of his own, Yuda discovers that he—an ordinary college kid with no belief in the old legends—may very well be the key to winning the upcoming battle against an ancient evil.
Review: Legend of Gatotkaca is a new superhero action picture starring Rizky Nazar as our hero Yuda who (as it says in the above synopsis) uncovers a secret prophecy that will be key to surviving the battle against an ancient evil.
I found Legend of Gatotkaca quite hard to follow as the subtitles didn’t make sense a lot of the time and they would move on so fast it was hard to keep up. The Blu-ray has an English dub of it which I may watch at some point… but probably not as there wasn’t anything that would make me want to sit through this film again. It’s not terrible but I thought it went on far too long and the pacing really drags in the middle.
I’ll watch anything with Yayan Ruhian (The Raid) and he has a sizeable role as one of the main villains but sadly the fight scenes are so poorly shot that we rarely see what’s going on; there are far too many quick edits that makes it confusing and ultimately frustrating.
There is also a side character called Quinn who has no purpose other than to be annoying and everything she says is irritating; thankfully (and this isn’t much of a spoiler) she is killed off screen so the film improves from then on. There is a lot of lore it tries to explain to us and as always it is very much open for a sequel but I’m not sure I’d be all that interested.
The music score is suitably heroic and swelling working well for the story but isn’t not especially memorable.
Overall, Legend of Gatotkaca has a few entertaining moments with Rizky Nazar making for an appealing hero but there is far too much exposition and the action scenes are so overly edited that it eventually just becomes a chore to sit through.
