Legend of Gatotkaca Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		2.5

Legend of Gatotkaca Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman March 9, 2023

Films tethered at least tangentially to scripture have been a staple of cinema since, well, cinema. Those conversant with Western religious traditions probably have their own favorite films in this genre, but the silent years had such epics as the original The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, and once "talkies" and then color entered the fray, a whole host of Biblically themed efforts populated movie houses for decades, with just the sixties alone offering The Bible: In the Beginning..., King of Kings, The Greatest Story Ever Told , and others too numerous to name. Islam may not have had the same glut of productions, perhaps due in part to the prohibition on depicting Mohammed, something that The Message managed to elide in an interesting way. Another Eastern tradition, Hinduism, has had a rather amazingly large number of productions (also going back to the silent era), but many if not most of those are probably largely unknown to Western audiences, though occasional epics like Peter Brook's immense The Mahabharata managed to capture some attention along the way. Legend of Gatotkaca is a kind of Hindu version of American Gods in a way, in that it offers a contemporary man who finds himself "related" to an ancient lineage which does in fact stem from the ancient revered Sanskrit text that Brook's film attempted (some might argue without real success) to adapt.

If Brook's film arguably suffered from too much exposition, my hunch is many who are relatively unschooled in Hinduism may be scratching their heads at regular intervals throughout this story, which is more or less a "superhero" origin tale whereby a veritable Golden Child (again, Hindu variety) slowly "awakens" to the fact that he's not just your everyday ordinary young college student. The film has pretty much already given away that "ghost" in an early vignette that documents this character as a little boy witnessing some supernatural phenomena involving his mother and aunt which seems to have something to do with a kind of magic amulet in his mother's possession.

Yuda (played by Rizky Nazar as an adult after the aforementioned brief prologue) is, like any good hero in a Joseph Campbell archetypal way, unaware of who he is or what his "destiny" may be, and is instead focused on the minutiae of day to day living. When a friend of his is killed, suddenly Yuda is either made newly aware or perhaps reminded of his true being, at which point the epic battles between the Kaurava and Pandava "tribes" from the Mahabharata are more overtly referenced. The narrative here is muddled to begin with and may well be incomprehensible in parts for the unschooled, but as might be hinted at by the fact that this was streamed by Well Go USA's Hi-Yah! service, the film relies at least as much on big action set pieces as it does on any putative story. Those are handled with a decent amount of flair, though the "final showdown" is kind of hilarious lo-res from a special effects standpoint and kind of plays like a B-movie outtake from Iron Man.

Legend of Gatotkaca Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Legend of Gatotkaca is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Well Go USA with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I haven't been able to track down any authoritative technical information on this shoot, but this is a competent digital capture that I'm assuming had a 2K DI. The film has some genuine style in terms of some of the lighting choices, which feature near John Wick levels of deeply saturated purples and teals, but which also offer a lot of nicely vivid reds, along with some frankly kind of sickly looking yellow greens. Fine detail in particular tends to be subject to these often radically changing tones, and as may also be gleaned from some of the screenshots I've uploaded to accompany this review, perhaps for budgetary reasons quite a bit of the VFX material tends to play out in near darkness, where even general detail levels can ebb for a moment or two. Also perhaps due to budgetary reasons, a mini exposition dump in the middle of the film features some animation (see screenshot 5). My score is 4.25.

Legend of Gatotkaca Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Perhaps surprisingly, Legend of Gatotkaca bears a Dolby Atmos credit in its closing roll, but Well Go USA's disc provides only its typical assortment of original language (in this case, Indonesian) or English dub in either DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and Dolby Digital 2.0. I toggled between the surround tracks just to get a general sense of things, and didn't really hear any discernable differences in amplitude or mix levels, though at least the English language track "corrects" some kind of hilarious malapropisms in the subtitles for the Indonesian track where, for example, Yuda's Aunt asks to meet the "man of the house" (as the subtitles state) in the film's prologue, a character who turns out to be Yuda's mother. The action sequences of course provide the most notable moments of immersion, and there are some whirlwind crackling effects courtesy of a villain's ability to marshal a kind of electric current to deal with enemies. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout. Optional English subtitles are available.

Legend of Gatotkaca Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Trailer (HD; 1:38)

Additionally, packaging features a slipcover.

Note: As tends to be the case with Well Go USA Blu-ray releases, the disc has been authored to automatically move on to trailers for other Well Go USA releases after the trailer for this film plays. Those trailers for other Well Go USA releases also play automatically at disc boot up.

Legend of Gatotkaca Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It's hard to know exactly what to think of Legend of Gatotkaca. Along with its ties to Hindu lore and legend, it's also a superhero origin story, has elements of "current events" (like a mysterious disease) and characters like a professor type in a wheelchair who seem deliberately lifted from other properties featuring, um, "mutants". If I'm understanding some Indonesian press I read on this release, this may be the beginning of a new series, and so perhaps subsequent outings can help fill in some pretty large narrative gaps in this particular presentation. Technical merits are generally solid for anyone who may be considering making a purchase.