‘24 Hours With Gaspar’: Busan Review

Dir: Yosep Anggi Noen. Indonesia. 2023. 98mins

Heavy with exposition, rueful narration and philosophising, Yosep Anggi Noen’s ambitious, streamlined adaptation of Sabda Armandio’s 2017 novel ’24 Hours With Gaspar’ could use a little less conversation and a bit more clarity. Reza Rahadian stars as a dour detective in a convoluted thriller of robbery and redemption that eventually gels in the final act. A slick commercial package should deliver in its home territory and attract wider interest from festivals charting the current surge in Indonesian cinema. 

All murky gloom and scrawled graffiti, the film unfolds in a futuristic Jakarta marked by urban decay and social breakdown

Yosep Anggi Noen’s The Science of Fictions (2019) earned a special mention from the Locarno Jury, and he brings a wealth of references to bear on his storytelling. The love of language, pulp fiction trappings and a Morricone-like soundtrack from Ricky Lionardi suggest the influence of Tarantino. The initial scene-setting depicts a dystopian vision that invites comparisons with John Carpenter and the lone wolf travails of Snake Plissken.

All murky gloom and scrawled graffiti, the film unfolds in a futuristic Jakarta marked by urban decay and social breakdown. (In the novel, the city was largely underwater.)  An assault on a train passenger is met by the indifference of his fellow travellers. An underclass battles for survival in bouts of brutal fisticuffs that are part of an underground Fight Club. The events that have led to this point are never explained, although we do discover that 2025 had seen the spread of plague number 36. The vision of the future is never fully elaborated upon but there is a constant undercurrent of a society racked with injustice and inequality.

Laconic, motorbike riding detective Gaspar (Reza Rahadian) is investigating a mass grave and human trafficking. His attention is now focused on a jewellery store run by Wan Ali (Iswadi Pratama) and the search for a mythical black box (shades of The Maltese Falcon) said to “hold all the knowledge of this earth.”

A doom-laden present is contrasted with the bright sunlight and pastel colours of repeated flashbacks where 11 year-old Gaspar (Ali Fikry) is a lonely lad who makes a cherished friend in his neighbour Kirana (Shofia Shireen).  An aspiring detective, Gaspar is distraught when she disappears and takes to heart her warning that if such a thing should happen he must never stop looking for her. Twenty-three years later he has never entirely abandoned hope of finding her, which adds personal stakes to this film’s political commentary. A further complication is that Gaspar was born with a heart on the right side of his body and the mechanism that allows it to keep beating has broken. He knows there is only 24 hours until his death and Noen emphasises this with a countdown of numbers of the screen and the occasional heartbeat on the soundtrack. 

Gaspar is stylishly executed but it feels as if there are some gaps in the narrative that leave the viewer floundering to make sense of it all. It really kicks into gear once Gaspar has assembled a rag-tag gang of co-conspirators who all have their reasons for seeking vengeance on Wan Ali, including Gaspar’s sidekick Agnes (Shenina Cinnamon), childhood schoolmate Kik (Laura Basuki) and her boyfriend Njet (Kristo Immanuel), Yadi (Sal Priadi) and the elderly Mrs Tati (Dewi Irawan). Treatment of the latter’s failing memory and senility is far from sensitive.

Genre fans should savour the doom-laden atmosphere and the chases and gunfire that spark the film’s final third. 24 Hours With Gaspar is entertaining enough but is does feel as if Noen struggles to do justice to all the elements and layers that made Armandio’s novel such an eye-catching fusion of detective story, science-fiction and metafiction.