TheJakartaPost.com – Rizal Iwan, Contributor, Jakarta
Jakarta Undercover (Thriller, 100 minutes) Starring Luna Maya, Lukman Sardi, Fachry Albar, Adry Valeri Wens, Verdi Solaiman, Kenshiro Arashi, Christian Sugiono, Aimee Juliette. Directed by Lance. Produced by Velvet Films. (Bahasa Indonesia)
Questions arose when the word was out that a film was going to be made based on Moammar Emka’s best-selling book Jakarta Undercover.
This was mainly because the book contains no storylines, but is more of an episodic report on Jakarta’s clandestine, sexually charged nightlife.
What to do? Find the right storyline to link these episodes together, of course.
Story/scribe Erwin Arnada and scriptwriter Joko Anwar seem to have come up with quite an intriguing plot in response to the challenge.
Female stripper Vicky (Maya), who masks her sexual identity to work in a transvestite strip club, finds herself in a life-threatening predicament when her autistic brother Ara (Arashi) witnesses a murder by a powerful thug, Haryo (Sardi), and his cronies (Solaiman and Wens).