Pengepungan di Bukit Duri attempts to be a gritty action-siege drama, but ends up being an unintentional parody of everything it imitates. The chaos is loud, the camera unhinged, but what truly hurts is the complete absence of narrative intelligence.
Letโs start with the most baffling plot point:
The protagonist is on a mission to find his missing nephew โ across all of East Jakartaโs schools. He finally settles on this particular one becauseโฆ one of the students is good at drawing. Why? Because, in his words, โeveryone in my family can draw.โ
Excuse me?
In a city of millions, we are to believe that one studentโs ability to sketch is enough to conclude blood relation. This isn't character logic โ itโs screenwriter laziness dressed as fate.
The rest of the film isnโt any kinder. The protagonist alternates between being a near-invincible brawler and a passive bystander who lets two characters die without even trying to fight back โ not due to trauma or fear, but apparently because the script needed a reason for drama.
The villains? A gang of high school rejects turned mass murderers, whose motivations are so vague โ demonic possession? urban nihilism? narrative convenience? โ that they might as well be placeholders for โwhatever makes them kill people.โ
Action sequences mimic The Raidโs kinetic energy but forget to include clarity. Rooms change without logic. Blows land from nowhere. Weapons spawn like loot boxes. Youโre left disoriented not because of the tension, but because the geography simply doesnโt exist.
And letโs not forget the insult to memory: this film sets its roots in fictional riots modeled after Indonesiaโs 1998 tragedy. But it uses that history only as aesthetic โ not substance. No real political progression, no world-building, no commentary. Just violence and shaky-cam.
This is not dystopia. Itโs scriptwriting roulette.
A film that mistakes noise for weight, trauma for spectacle, and coincidence for plot.