Mat Arip (Fad Anuar) is an incorrigible gambler who has recently brought his family into his mounting debts by betting the deeds to their paddy fields to a local gangster who is keen to buy up the land in the area to increase his empire, and his fortune. But his father Pak Nayan (Namron) is not going to take this development lying down, and when the gang boss's heavies show up they reckon without his careful tutoring of his three children in silat, the East Asian martial art which not only Mat Arip is skilled in, but also his brother Ali (Khoharullah Majid) and his sister Fatimah (Feiyna Tajudin). When the lackeys grow threatening, she is having none of it and proceeds to beat them all up single-handed: it is clear the gang has a battle on its hands.
Silat was the martial art best known for its use in Indonesian action flick The Raid, of course, but naturally it was not the only movie from that part of the world to implement it as a sure method of adding a dose of excitement and spice to the local cinema output. Deed of Death was a far lower budget movie, and it showed - most of the budget appeared to have gone on hiring a drone for shooting a bunch of panoramas for scene-setting purposes - but first-time director Areel Abu Bakar knew what the audience wanted to see, and peppered the early stages with fight sequences, gradually increasing their frequency until the final act was almost exclusively characters knocking seven bells out of one another with the aforementioned silat skills.
Bakar had recruited much of his combat cast at silat training school, confident they could recreate the moves they had been tutored in in class before a camera, and for the most part, he was not wrong. It was undeniably entertaining to see, for instance, Fatimah get her own fight sequences, handing the bastards' asses to them with the ability of a veteran, and all while wearing her headscarf which entertained the Western audiences who were not used to such sights from an Islamic lady. Indeed, we could have done with more of Tajudin's physical prowess, for the film was intent on showcasing almost the entire cast's martial arts, and that included Majid who offscreen had competed in official contests in the technique, hence the final half hour showing off his baddest moves on all the most arrogant evildoers the gang boss could throw at him.
Intriguingly, there was an element of religious instruction crowbarred in as well; Nayan is happy to tell all who will listen about how to live your life in service to God, something the mobsters are not doing and something Mat Arip certainly has neglected, indicating if he had simply stayed observant of the spiritual consequences of straying from the straight and narrow, then he would not be in this mess right now. For a spot of cash-in potential, Bakar dabbled in Fast and Furious car racing too for his wayward son, and it was all too clear his best qualities did not lie with ripping off Hollywood and instead sticking with what he knew well, as this stuff was not necessary, and the audience was only going to be making comparisons that would see him come up a distant second best. But when he was delivering the scenes of his actors beating each other up, he was on far firmer ground, and that is what the selling point was, one for the martial arts fan who likes to investigate what the film industries away from the big three of China, Japan and South Korea were getting up to in East Asia. Music by Bajai.
[Signature Entertainment presents Deed of Death on Digital Platforms 23rd August 2021.]
