{"id":6746,"date":"2019-01-10T13:10:10","date_gmt":"2019-01-10T18:10:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=6746"},"modified":"2019-01-10T13:10:13","modified_gmt":"2019-01-10T18:10:13","slug":"review-buffalo-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=6746","title":{"rendered":"Review: BUFFALO BOYS"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Energetic and well-shot, producer Mike Wiluan\u2019s martial arts Western is anything but boring.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

When two brothers, Jamar (Ario Bayu) and Suwo (Yoshi Sudarso), visit the land of Java to avenge their father, they find the place under the control of Dutch colonialists. Led by the ruthless Van Trach (Reinout Bussemaker), villagers live in constant terror, as a band of enforcers viciously threaten the town into submission. Naturally, the brothers have to step up and bring some rough and tumble justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
The Dutch are the villains in “Buffalo Boys.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A wild combination of martial arts fantasy and western cowboy genre tropes, \u201cBuffalo Boys\u201d really has its moments. Stars Bayu and Sudarso are magnetic and their brotherly chemistry credible, even as most everything around them gets ever more ridiculous over the film\u2019s running time. There is one scene early where a young woman is introduced riding a water buffalo in fully high speed gallop. It\u2019s really striking. No doubt that there are some special effects being employed, but this image, repeated during a key scene later, stands out as something completely different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Ario Bayu and Yoshi Sudarso are great as two brothers seeking justice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Director Wiluan, whose filmography includes producing services on 2015\u2019s \u201cHitman: Agent 47\u201d and last year\u2019s smash hit \u201cCrazy Rich Asians,\u201d makes an impressive debut behind the camera with \u201cBuffalo Boys.\u201d While the narrative is a bit uneven, the outlandish action is almost non-stop with some clever twists and turns. While this was Singapore\u2019s submission for the foreign language Oscar, there is quite a bit of English spoken throughout the movie. This element is interesting, especially since the two brothers are very adept at floating between the various languages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBuffalo Boys\u201d is a fun, frenzied neo-western, in the vein of the Italian \u201cspaghetti\u201d variety, but with a marital arts dimension. And then there\u2019s the water buffalos that are like something out of a Marvel movie. This is one inventive film that won\u2019t lull you to sleep.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ride the water buffalo! Jonathan is amused by Mike Wiluan’s energetic genre mashup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[1176,1173,1174,1175,50,1178,1177],"class_list":["post-6746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-ario-bayu","tag-buffalo-boys","tag-maritial-arts","tag-mike-wiluan","tag-movie-review","tag-reinout-bussemaker","tag-yoshi-sudarso","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6755,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6746\/revisions\/6755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}