Anthony Wong, Cuba Gooding Jr., drama, Edmund Kwan, Eric Roberts, Indonesia, James Barrington, Kevin Sorbo, Madeline Anderson, movies, Nadia Maximova, reviews, The Firing Squad, Timothy Chey, Tupua Ainu'u
August 4, 2024
by Carla Hay
Directed by Timothy Chey
Culture Representation: Taking place mainly in Indonesia (with flashbacks to scenes in various parts of the world over an approximately 10-year period), the faith-based dramatic film “The Firing Squad” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Asians and black people) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.
Culture Clash: A convicted drug dealer, who is in prison in Indonesia and will soon face execution by a firing squad, meets various people who have opinions about Christianity and salvation.
Culture Audience: “The Firing Squad” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in preachy faith-based films, even if the filmmaking is very low-quality.
“The Firing Squad” absolutely murders any chance of being a well-made film. This atrocious faith-based drama (which is mainly set at a prison in Djakarta, Indonesia) has an onslaught of terrible acting, fake-looking scenarios and cringeworthy dialogue. “The Firing Squad” is one of those tone-deaf movies that has no self-awareness of how bad it is because it’s too caught up in bombastically awkward preaching that the only people who can be “saved” are those who believe in Christianity.
Written and directed by Timothy Chey, “The Firing Squad” is such a sloppy display of horrible filmmaking, it seems to be almost like a parody of awful movies, except “The Firing Squad” obviously takes itself way too seriously to be a satire. The movie’s story is supposed to be mostly in Indonesia, but “The Firing Squad” was actually filmed in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Vero Beach, Florida. Almost everything about this movie looks as phony as an American rupiah.
“The Firing Squad” begins by explaining that the main character is Peter Lone (played by James Barrington), a drug-dealer-turned-actor who has been arrested for drug smuggling in Indonesia and will be executed by a firing squad in the near future. Peter’s backstory is very jumbled because of substandard screenwriting. He’s a Brit who was based in Los Angeles at the time he was arrested. A TV news report says he was an actor, but Peter has told people he’s a director of TV commercials.
Flashbacks to 2013 show Peter’s globe-trotting, luxurious lifestyle as a drug dealer. His best friend/sidekick is Morgan Davis (played by Chase Garland), who doesn’t do much but stand around looking like a model and uttering some ridiculous lines. Peter and Morgan have been drug dealers since 2008. It’s shown repeatedly in many clumsily staged scenes that Peter is a staunch atheist, while Morgan (who was raised as a Christian) is starting to question his purpose in life and is feeling guilty about being a criminal.
Peter, Morgan and Peter’s fiancée Karen Armstrong (played by Nadia Maximova) are constant travel companions who often travel by private jet. Karen is depicted as clueless about what Peter really does for money. She believes Peter’s lie that he directs TV commercials for a living. Maximova’s wooden acting is among the worst in a movie filled with dreadful performances.
It’s revealed in flashbacks that Peter and Morgan were busted in Indonesia for seven kilos of cocaine and have ended up in separate prisons. The interrogation scenes are laughable for how unrealistic they are. Karen is never investigated and she’s easily let go just because she says she doesn’t know anything about Peter being a drug dealer. She’s advised by the authorities not to contact Peter again. Karen doesn’t need anyone to give her that advice because Peter’s lies and betrayal are enough for her to be done with him.
The chief interrogator is a snarling official named Captain Tanu (played by Tupua Ainu’u), who also happens to be the chief warden of the prison where Peter is incarcerated. (In other words, the filmmakers of “The Firing Squad” were too cheap or too stupid to hire different actors for two very different jobs.) Later, it’s pounded into viewers’ heads repeatedly in several scenes that Captain Tanu is a cruel sadist who is also an atheist.
In the interrogation room, Peter denies that he’s a drug dealer. He’s shocked to find out that Karen has dumped him so quickly. Captain Tanu’s response is to smirk at Peter and tell him it’s just like the Michael Jackson song “She’s Out of My Life.” And then, Captain Tanu begins to sing the song off-key to Peter. Yes, the movie really is this idiotic.
Even worse than the interrogation scene is the courtroom scene where Peter is convicted without a trial, even though he planned to plead not guilty. A defense attorney named Adam Markman (played by Eric Roberts), who has supposedly been sent by the U.S. consulate in Indonesia, is representing Peter. After Adam tells Judge Samudra (played by Anthony Wong) that Peter is not guilty, the judge sentences Peter to death literally within two minutes after the courtroom hearing started, with no witnesses called and no evidence presented. It’s not a trial. It’s a legal fiasco.
While he’s in prison, Peter meets a fellow prisoner named Pastor Lynbrook (played by Kevin Sorbo), who’s incarcerated for murder and is also scheduled to be executed by a firing squad in the near future. Pastor Lynbrook is a born-again Christian and self-made preacher, who tries to get Peter to become a believer too. Peter gruffly refuses. Maybe it’s because Pastor Lynbrook makes comments like, “Eternity is forever.” But somehow, Peter changes his mind when he gets a crush on a pretty blonde named Miriam Rosenbaum (played by Madeline Anderson), who visits the prison with her church group to pray for and pray with the prisoners.
Peter and Captain Tanu actually have something in common: They both don’t believe in God or any religion because each of them had someone they loved who died of cancer. For Peter, it was his brother who had this untimely death. For Captain Tanu, it was his wife, and she died when they were married for only two years. Captain Tanu (who has an American accent) shouts things at prisoners such as, “There is no God! In this prison, I am your God!”
“The Firing Squad” is extremely careless with details. This Indonesian prison looks very phony because most of the people working in the prison are white. The prison employees who speak have American accents. Did this prison in “Indonesia” import a bunch of employees from a country where most people are white? That’s the type of fakery that “The Firing Squad” wants viewers to believe or not notice at all.
Death row prisoners are supposed to have maximum security incarceration. And yet, in this prison shown in “The Firing Squad,” death row prisoners get to have unrealistic privileges, such as visitors inside their jail cells. Prisoners in this movie are also allowed to roam around as if they don’t have surveillance cameras that could catch them doing something wrong. The movie never shows metal detectors or various checkpoints that are standard for any prison that has death row inmates.
Peter’s conversion to Christianity is not spoiler information because it’s already revealed in “The Firing Squad” trailer, which shows about 85% of the movie’s putrid plot. Peter finds out that one of his drug connections named Liu Fat (played by Edmund Kwan) is in the same prison. Peter and Liu meet another prisoner named Samuel Wilson (played by a raspy-voiced Cuba Gooding Jr.), who says he has a plan for the three of them to escape from prison: They will disguise themselves as media reporters.
Samuel says he can get access to business suits as disguises. It leads to one of the worst parts of the movie: Peter, Liu and Samuel are actually allowed to walk out of this joke of a prison by telling a guard that they’re media journalists (they use aliases), and they left their IDs behind. And somehow, as the movie explains unrealistically, Samuel was able to make the same arrangements for Morgan to escape from Morgan’s prison too.
“The Firing Squad” trailer already reveals that Peter was at least one of the prison escapees who was caught. What the trailer doesn’t reveal is that Captain Tanu punishes Peter by putting him into solitary confinement for four days without food and water, which is basically attempted murder. Considering the medical fact that human beings can survive for only three days without liquids, are we supposed to assume that Peter drank his own urine since he was deprived of water?
The movie’s marketing materials say that “The Firing Squad” is based on a true story. However, the movie’s epilogue shows that “The Firing Squad” isn’t a biography of anyone specific but is actually inspired by people in Indonesian prisons who became Christians. Peter’s “solitary confinement” is putting him in a wire fence cage in an open field. It’s far better punishment than having to sit through the utter garbage of “The Firing Squad” and how it relentlessly insults viewers’ intelligence.
Epoch Studios released “The Firing Squad” in U.S. cinemas on August 2, 2024.