Tailo
can’t pick and chose his family anymore than the rest of us can. Unfortunately,
that also means he is stuck with the same people when it comes to his extortion
ring. You are much better off calling for an Uber at the K-L airport, then
ordering a cab from Tailo’s sister-in-law, Michelle. When her husband and his
thuggish buddy go off the reservation, they bring down heat from both sides of
the law in Zahir Omar’s Fly by Night, which
screens during the 2019 Atlanta Film Festival.
Tailo
is cautious in all respects, including expansion. He only trusts a longtime
friend like Ah Soon, a freshly released ex-con. Both older men know Sailo and
his running mate Gwailo are bad news, but they are stuck with them. Alas, Sailo
and Gwailo are complete idiots, who think a jilted mistress like Reanne would
be a good mark. Instead, she manipulates them into targeting her wealthy
ex-lover.
Reanna
is not a particularly stable partner to do business with, but Sailo and Gwailo
really make a hash of things when they pick a fight with a regular customer in
a mobbed-up casino. Suddenly, they owe a lot of money to a real, leg-breaking
gang. They also have the only slightly corrupt Inspector Kamal sniffing around.
Frankly, the two knuckleheads make so many mistakes, Tailo would like to throttle
them, but what can he do when they’re family?
Fly has a lot of people
connected to the Malaysian film world excited for its prospects—for easily discernible reasons. This isn’t just the first hip post-Tarantino kind of noir produced
by the country’s film industry. It is a good enough film to get picked up by
any mid-sized specialty distributor.
Omar’s
execution is tight and taut and the screenplay, credited to him, Ivan Yeo and Frederick
Bailey offers several new twists to the old family-gangster story. However, it
is Sunny Pang who really elevates the film as the grimly fatalistic, drily
understated Tailo. He personifies the
film’s tone and attitude, but the entire ensemble is quite strong. Fabian Loo
and Jack Tan are totally destabilizing wild cards as Sailo and Gwailo, while
Bront Palarae just oozes charismatic malevolence as the crooked Kamal. Joyce
Harn plays Reanne as a dangerous combination of hot mess and femme fatale, while
Ruby Yap is deeply compelling as the scared and vulnerable Michelle.
Despite
taking a very different narrative direction, Fly by Night compares quite directly and favorably with David Michôd’s
Animal Kingdom, because of the way
both films depict families corrupted by their own criminal endeavors. Yet, like
the best noirs, FBN also shares a
kinship with classical tragedy. Very highly recommended, Fly by Night screens tomorrow night (4/9) at the Atlanta Film
Festival and Sunday (4/14) in DC at the Freer-Sackler, as part of the Crazy Broke Asians film series.
