Java Heat (2013)

If The Raid Redemption set the high standard for Indonesian action films then Java Heat sets the low standard. It fails in nearly every area fundamental for an action movie to work.

Java Heat story centers on the aftermath of a suicide bombing in Indonesia, where a reckless American posing as a grad student is bent on vengeance but quickly finds that the world's problems can't be solved with violence alone. Now the plot is serviceable, but the characters we're meant to follow are not. Our hero Jake is a FBI/Teaching Assistant/Marine/Spy/Cop is inept in what he does. Jake is a not good cop since he never uses his brain when trying to find a missing person. Despite being an FBI he knows nothing on the criminal world or how it operates. You'll wonder how Jake ever got into the Marines since he doesn't know how to react in combat either. The plot might have been cliched and convoluted to attempt to be smart, but at least it had some promising ideas. The hero was not one of them dragging the film down with him.

Jake Islamic partner Hashim is the exact opposite. For some reason the writers felt having an Islamic protagonist was not the way to and instead made him a sidekick. This works against the film since the sidekick has is more interesting, has more to lose, and knows what he's doing. Hashim is not that bad of a character, but the writers over shadow this with no idea on how law enforcement works. The police are given a poor representation as they do nothing to clean up the streets. The police even go as far as broadcast their raid of a criminal home live on TV and post it on the internet. Religious sensitivity is something this film is not familiar with. In order to get across our villain is evil just keep reminding the audience he's Islamic. I'm not an expert on the Islamic religion, but I'll doubt this is how they would like to be portrayed. One character in particular is a henchman of the villain and despite disagreeing with him on nearly everything he's order to do the henchman continues working for the villain because he's Islamic.

The acting is equally as bad as our protagonist. Our lead actor is Kellan Lutz or to be more accurate second rate Channing Tatum. Lutz has the muscle and looks, but none of the appeal. Lutz is consistently stiff in his line delivery, robotic in his movement, and his chemistry with the actors is nonexistent. When it comes to Lutz going into action mode he's below Winnie the Pooh when it comes to striking fear. Even the director knows this attempting to insert epic music to make him appear tough. Mickey (I'm here for the paycheck) Rourke phones it in as the villain and only has around five minute of screen time at most. Mickey Rourke phoning acting is still above our lead acting. Ario Bayu is believable in his role. Unlike the lead he actually gives an emotion. The Muslims actors were unconvincing. They clearly had trouble with English and despite fairing better in their native language the filmmakers desire to film this in English backfires for them. The action scenes were low budget and poorly staged. Gunfights are too simple to generate excitement and the fight scenes are badly performed. None the punches feel rough and the actors execution is more comedic than exhilarating.

Java Heat contains the genre lamest action hero and most inept FBI/Teaching Assistant/Marine/Spy/Cop to date. Java Heat is watchable in a sense it had some good ideas that could have benefited the film, but not in a sense you'll want to stick around before the end credits roll up.