KL Gangster (2011) & KL Gangster 2 (2013)

[One Armed Boxer]

While the Hong Kong action movie industry continues to struggle along, it`s been countries like Thailand, Indonesia, Chile, & even the UK that have been producing the raw talent that is essential to kung-fu cinema.

Now, after their intial weak entry into the martial arts movie world that was the completely forgetable `Kinta 1881`, Malaysia are giving it another go with `KL Gangster`, directed by Syamsul Yusof.

I have to say the trailer looks promising - modern day environment, lots of stuff getting smashed, pretty firece fighting, and baseball bats (I`ve had a thing for fights which involve baseball bats ever since seeing Lau Kar Leung go ballistic with one in `A Bloody Fight`!).

Check it out below -

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[The Last Dragon]

awesome and nice find. This is bad ass. I hope to catch this somewhere eventually soon. If you get a chance to see this let us know if it's any good. Looks like a great combination of guns and fighting going on in this. I felt an adrenaline rush just from the trailer alone

[Dragons Fury]

looks good , finally malaysia's making some good martial arts films.

[ShaOW!linDude]

Nice, OAB!

Never heard anything about this. The first part of the trailer was making me think 'ah, this is more of a basher movie" but then the choreography picked up. I'm interested in seeing this.

[daisho2004]

Looks pretty good, definitely worth a watch.

[Space]

Nice.

KL is the shiz.

[One Armed Boxer]

I don't think it's really worth creating a whole new thread for....but Malaysia is also soon to releasse the sci-fi actioner 'Apokalips X'...which looks like a mix of 'City Under Siege' meets 'Crows Zero' meets 'Versus'...whether that combination turns out to be a watchable one is still hard to judge, but you can check out the 40 second teaser below -

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[ShaOW!linDude]

Okay, yeah, I'm down for this one!

[HyperDrive]

The production company, Skop Productions, has already released this on dvd. I found it today at my local Asian marketplace. The running time is 113 minutes.* For those who care, specs include English subtitles, 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and 5.1 surround sound.

*Misprint on dvd cover. It should be 1:13 mins as total running time is only 76 mins.

[One Armed Boxer]

A friend of mine recently went on vacation to Malaysia, so somewhere out of the back parts of my mind, I suddenly remembered about this movie and asked him to pick it up for me while he was there (inbetween lounging around on beaches of course).

Well, I just got through watching this, and have to say it's a fairly solid if entirely routine gangster flick. The story is pretty standard fare, a gangster wanting to go straight starts the movie by getting released from prison, played by Aaron Aziz, and has to resist the many temptations and manipulations of the old gangs to get him back into the scene, not least of all by his own brother who's now on the rise in the gangster world, played by Adi Putra. Throw in a few double crosses, and if anyone's seen 'Hong Kong Godfather' you know the score.

Barely scraping in at 80 minutes, the movie certainly doesn't outstay it's welcome, and during it's run time it manages to thrown in some pretty high quality fisty cuffs. All of the action is completely grounded, no wires in sight, and there's a lot of one on one exchanges which are reminiscent of the old 80's modern day kick boxing movies from HK. There's plenty of punching combinations, with some nifty kicks thrown in as well, one in particular when the main character kicks through a sheet of plastic another character picks up is a clear nod to the table splitting kick Donnie Yen does against Xing Yu in 'Flash Point'.

Another bonus of the fight scenes....they get bloody, which gives them a real sense of impact which I enjoyed, when someone takes a punch, you feel it. & on a personal note, I respect any movie which contains a "one person wielding a metal baseball bat versus many" fight scene, nobody does it quite like Lau Kar Leung, but the scene in this movie is pretty good as well.

Throw in some average gun play, and a nice finale with some cool shots of people getting kicked through various panes of glass and furnishings, and 'KL Gangster' is a nice action fix from the unlikely country of Malaysia. Of course much like China, all Malaysian movies are also subject to approval from the Government with even stuff like swearing cut out of many releases of Western movies. So it's not really a major spoiler to say it ends rather blandly with the main character telling us in voice over that the police eventually caught all the gangsters and they went to prison, but that's not necessarily the film makers fault.

All in all, if you can track it down, 'KL Gangster' is a decent way to pass 80 minutes of your time.

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[Dragons Fury]

The sequel to malaysian movie kl gangster , heres the trailer:

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[KUNG FU BOB]

Hey Dragons Fury, thanks for posting this. That's one seriously cool trailer! The action look fantastic. Can't wait for this.

[blue_skies]

Some extended action scenes would be nice rather than cutting every second or less....

[Gwai LO]

Im pumped about the KL Gangster 2 coming out in Oct. has anyone ever seen the first one? i read the review above but was wondering if its worth me picking up

[Gwai LO]

Just watched this movie online (kl gangster 1) and even tho i liked the movie, i was not impressed with the fights. moves seemed kinda slow and very basic. some cool combination style punches but other than that...blah. KL Gangster actually reminded me a lot of "1 Lawan Satu"

[Jesse Smooth]

Its good to see that the Southeast Asian countries are steeping their movie industry up.

[VenomsFan]

Part 2 (a prequel to the first one) came out this week in Malay theaters and is set to break the previous movie's Box Office record

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Any fan of the genre should check them out. I will say the choreography is at the "beginner's level', meaning they are not as complex as veteran's Li, Chan, Yen or even Kuwais, Ruyan and Jaa. But these guys are so damn ambitious. It's like a dozen Jaas and Kuwais running around taking hits and kicks I swear it evolves right before your eyes and pure MA awesomeoness come finale time.

There is a lot of action in the series. If they keep up this intensity Indonesia will have someone knocking on their door pretty soon.