Yesterday, I went to watch Kolumpo. I'm so glad it lived up to my expectation, after seeing its mass and guerrilla promotion (since 2012!) and hearing nothing but positive reviews about it online.
It is a compilation of 3 short-stories located in KL. The first one is about foreign workers' nightmare in KL. This is a fresh perspective from foreign workers' view about their unlucky journey after being offered
'lucrative' jobs in KL but only to find they were actually tricked to involuntarily involve in PATI syndicate. Azad Jazmin gave a shocking (at least to me) and effective performance as Rahul, a guy from Mumbai who came to Malaysia being offered a job as an assistant manager. Other cast including Mano Maniam, Radhi Khalid & Shoffi Jikan complimented this well-crafted short. It is more comedic in nature than the other two so it is also the most entertaining one. Not to mention the amount of cameos and the comical fellow Indian workers. And the potatoes.
The second short is the best among the three. It is about a Chinese andartu who met an old Malay woman and they both started a journey to send the latter back home. Hands down, Ruminah Sidek gave one of the best performance I've seen in a local movie. She broke my heart with her wonderful acting. An award-worthy. She MUST win. And her chemistry with the andartu played by Nell Ng is beautiful throughout the short. While it may not be the most connected short with the other two, it served many thoughtful stuffs and if you watch it carefully, this short also provides a character-study on some cast. Including on a gang of Malay rempits. Go watch it if you want to know.
Finally, the third. Sharifah Amani and a boy who took interior design course. It's weird and romantic. Well, it was like other local 'indie' romantic movies (KIL first came to mind) but it got some punchy factors. The encounters with some colorful 'KL' characters along the way made the short worth it to watch. In the end, it felt like 500 Days of Summer (why do I always refer to this movie???), it's not a love short-story, but a short-story about love AND accepting people. And heck, it also ended half-exactly like 500 Days of Summer! Okay nevermind...
Overall, Kolumpo is a good watch. A lot of lessons an messages beside portraying alternative sides of Kuala Lumpur other than gangsterism (ehem). My only problem with it is that I expected the three shorts to have more links or connections between one another but nope. Only brief cameos from some characters from one short in another and that is all. So, I don't actually see this as a movie, but more of 'a compilation movie of 3 different shorts located in a same big city'. Both are different things.
Again, Azad Jazmin, Ruminah Sidek and Nell Ng were the standouts above the other brilliant cast. And I'm glad it didn't only focus on KL, the big city. Setapak also got included! Because KL is more than just KLCC and other tall buildings in picture.
Nurul Atikah binti Abdul Rahman selling wigs; Is that an innuendo like 'check-in'? Hmm...
I rated it 4/5 stars.
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