by Keri O’Shea
Movies released on the eponymous Indonesian label Rapi Films were nothing if not a pleasing fusion of East meets West; playing with recognisable genres, yet distinctly Indonesian in theme, you could always be sure of a mix between the familiar and the batshit insane. The Warrior is probably one of the best examples of that mix – coming as it does straight out of the golden age of Indonesian cinema, and what’s more, proving that the Far East could be ahead of the curve too: The Warrior made it to screens a year before Conan the Barbarian did, but anticipated some of its themes.
Without further ado, let me introduce you to our hero and the ‘warrior’ of the title. Meet Djaka Semboeng (or indeed Jaka Sembung – the spelling varies). The plot takes us back to some point in the nineteenth century, and to the Dutch occupation of Indonesia: Jaka, alongside many others, has been captured and put to work for his part in an uprising against the foreign invaders. Soul-crushing labour ensues – but you can’t keep a good man down, and Jaka leads yet another rebellion, Dutch muskets be damned. This time, he escapes, and the Dutch put a bounty on his head – Dead or Alive.
…And who should see one of these Wanted posters, but a local hard-nut, shaven-headed wizard? Kobar is the type of man who can breathe fire and wrestle cattle to death, and he fancies his chances at capturing Sembung. He offers to work for the Dutch – Sembung is bloodily victorious – but the Dutch have obviously taken to the idea of hiring black magicians to work for them, and so they engage a couple more (Indonesia obviously has its fair share). Cue resurrections, explosions, showers of boulders, imprecations to Allah, severed limbs, rudimentary transplants, bodily transformations, oh, and more explosions. Not to mention revenge, and lots of it!
What’s obvious from even the most cursory glance over all of that is that Rapi Films saw no problem with encompassing a fair few genres within one genre film. Here we have a blend of historical drama, fantasy and martial arts (though martial arts seem to be a prerequisite in anything from romance to horror in Far Eastern cinema, to be fair). As ‘busy’ a film as it is, though, The Warrior has more than enough about it to hold these elements together. It moves at a good pace, it’s action-packed, and it has a few minutes which are, to be fair, pretty shocking, considering where and when the film was made, let alone the no doubt limited budget. To balance out the copious use of fireworks and dry ice, The Warrior doesn’t flinch from women being violently beaten, eyes being gouged, and torture aplenty.
Of course, one of the film’s strengths for us Western audiences is the fun to be had from culture shock, and The Warrior has a lot to offer on that score. For a start, howsabout the depiction of Westerners themselves? It’s interesting to see how colonialists could be imagined by the local populations they planted flags amongst, and the Dutch here are our unequivocal bad guys. The only European with a heart is the daughter of the evil Commandant, name of Maria (though she’s played by an Indonesian woman, as there are only a handful of real live white folks in this movie). And, Maria’s sympathy for the native people seems to be a tad influenced by the fact that she has her beady eye on a nice bit of Jaka – which doesn’t do her much good in the end. The rest are ugly, hairy (with a few of the actors getting into role by dyeing their hair and beards an unconvincing blond) and of course arrogant. And their religion? “To hell with those Christians!” exclaims one of the (Muslim) rebels, a phrase which would go down like a cup of cold puke in many parts of Europe and America these days, as would the idea of a good Muslim boy as the hero. Whilst, interestingly, black magic seems to co-exist with Islam in The Warrior, it’s those pesky Dutch who employ it against Jaka, and when Jaka needs assistance, he gets his divine intervention from Allah. Invaders, infidels and conspirators, there’s not much good to say about Jaka’s persecutors here. Well, it makes a change for ‘us’ (perhaps unfairly assuming that the majority of BAH readers are American or European) to be the Other, eh?
As for Jaka himself, he’s intriguing, because he’s a folk hero on-screen played by a folk hero off-screen. Barry Prima, star of The Warrior, is a legendary figure in his native country; see all of those mad martial arts skillz? All genuine, after the star developed a fascination with Bruce Lee as a kid and, instead of just thinking ‘I wish I could do that’ like a lot of us might, he actually learned and learned really bloody well, too. His powerful presence was felt in a number of Indonesian genre films made throughout the 1980s (The Devil’s Sword being another stellar example), and part of the reason that the films are so successful is that, like so many genre film actors, he plays his roles completely straight. There’s camp in The Warrior, sure, but never deliberately so, and Prima always maintains a seriousness which means that you can laugh at a fair few things in the film, but not at him.
So where is Prima now? Well, according to the Mondo Macabro release which brought this remastered Warrior to modern audiences and also according to IMDb, he’s recently been back in front of the camera after a decades-long hiatus. He seems to have moved away from the freedom-fighting and into light comedy, but that’s by-the-by; it’s still good to hear that he’s still around and still making movies. And, hey, there’s only so much mass Dutch death you can perpetrate…
An epic film and a love-letter from Indonesia’s gloriously lurid film heyday, The Warrior has to be seen to be believed. On a sadder note, Indonesia’s political situation in recent years has meant a real downturn in their film industry, and current censorship laws would probably prohibit something as OTT as The Warrior being made today – see this film, then, and be grateful that Rapi Films did what they did when they could.