JAKARTA - Mindcage film opens in Indonesian cinemas starting Wednesday, December 21, 2022. Mindcage's story follows Detective Jake Doyle (played by Martin Lawrence) and Mary Kelly (played by Melissa Roxburgh) who is trying to uncover a serial murder case that occurred in her area, Arkansas, United States.
In contrast to serial killings in general, the murder found by the detective duo targeted the female victim and was "matched" by the perpetrator like a beautiful angel of death. This made the detectives and police remembered the perpetrators of a similar crime named The Artist (played by John Malkovich) who was behind bars.
Detective Jake and Mary also assumed that the perpetrator they were targeting this time was a clone of The Artist. Therefore, they -- especially Detective Mary, are looking for clues and assistance to The Artist to uncover the case of this imitator who is currently a fugitive in the city.
As Mary digs deep into The Artist's brilliant but insane soul, she and Jake get caught into the cruel "cats and mice" game. They race against time to keep a step ahead of The Artist and the impersonator.
Quoted from ANTARA, the Mindcage premise more or less reminds mystery and thriller film lovers of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Japanese film Lesson in Murder (2022) who dwell on the police who ask for help from the perpetrators of the murder.
Although interesting and has many sides to explore further, "Mindcage" seems quite hasty in conveying the story. For example, why is the murder of women who are targeted by mostly sex workers? Then, the reasons for choosing "miracle" makeup as the theme and characteristics of the perpetrator, to involvement from a religious point of view and exorsism around this case.
As heroes in the story, both Lawrence and Roxburgh as duo detectives are quite good at playing their respective characters. Both have different sides but also complement each other.
Roxburgh as Detective Mary has a strong emotional side and persistence on the screen. He is able to give a glimmer of color to the story and film. On the other hand, Malkovich as The Artist gave quite an interesting performance. There are several scenes that he is able to perform uniquely, but there are also those who give a little laughter in the midst of the seriousness of the film.
However, it seems that the audience is not able to explore these characters in terms of emotional closeness, considering the many other elements that must also be displayed in the film.
Furthermore, Mindcage also has a number of dialogues that make the audience wonder, and seem to invite the audience to follow the duo's journey of detectives to solve the case. There are quite a lot of fun in the adventure to unite the many pieces of clues that have been obtained, however, at the same time, sometimes the mystery that surrounds it is too wide and not balanced with satisfactory answers.
This film is very promising in terms of premises, but it seems that the presentation is still not strong enough technically. The script is combined with a production and editing design that both have the impression of being "excited".
However, this film could be an interesting spectacle to watch this year with a series of mysteries to solve together.
The English, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, and French versions are automatically generated by the AI. So there may still be inaccuracies in translating, please always see Indonesian as our main language. (system supported by DigitalSiber.id)
