Magnum Muslim .357 wants to be a big movie. It wants to be important. The massive runtime certainly suggests something like that. But as it turns out, that runtime is largely filled up with a whole lot of nothing. Though a lot of it is gorgeously lit and well shot, the movie struggles to provide any content that really matters. It stretches out about an hour’s worth of content into twice that amount of time, the wheels spinning for far too long with the movie going absolutely nowhere.
Lt. Jamal Razul (Jeorge Estregan) is assigned to take down the criminal syndicate that kidnapped Ameerah (Sam Pinto), the daughter of a powerful Muslim clan leader. He rescues her in short order, but there appears to be more to this case than just a simple kidnapping. The lieutenant uncovers a high level conspiracy to provide arms to criminals and sow conflict in the country. He soon finds it difficult to trust his own comrades, and he must turn to his community to find help and keep Ameerah safe.
At over 130 minutes, the movie feels like a rough cut. There is a lot of extraneous material. There is a whole scene, for example, where the lieutenant enumerates the different types of Magnum firearms to a child. The point of this scene is hazy at best, and it should have been kept on the cutting room floor. The film is also prone to explaining things that don't really need to be explained. One part of the movie has the characters traveling to Malawi. Rather than just get straight to the new venue, the film wastes valuable minutes showing the characters booking a private jet, getting into it, and sleeping in transit.
Meanwhile, the movie doesn't actually tell much of a story. It turns out that Lt. Razul isn't a very good policeman, as he spends the entirety of the movie blaming the wrong people for the plot against Ameerah, even after being confronted with the leader of the criminal syndicate. This gets really dumb in the last stretch of the movie, where Razul leads an entire clan of Muslims in an attack against the wrong people. Worse yet, there are no consequences for this mistake, the film brushing away the offense even after blood has been spilled.
The best thing about the movie is that it often looks very good. Dix Buhay's lighting makes the movie look much better than it is. Sadly, the direction doesn't really keep up. The action sequences are poorly conceived, with a surplus of lifeless firefights that mainly have the hero gunning down swaths of bad guys too dumb to find cover. The production frays at the corners. There’s a scene, for example, where the main character appears to be wearing an army fatigues with the wrong nametag. At the center of all this is Jeorge Estregan, whose stilted delivery just doesn't fit in a realistic context. It doesn’t help that he’s sporting a ridiculous goatee. But there's plenty of bad acting to go around, the entire cast seemingly trying to outdo each other with their overwrought delivery.
There’s just no reason that Magnum Muslim .357 should take so long. It just seems to be under the impression that it’s imparting something important to its audience. But the hard truth is that whatever lessons this film might bear are completely overshadowed by copious amounts of narrative nonsense. In theory, this film stands for peace and solidarity among the Muslims. But what emerges from this lengthy monstrosity of a film is a confused narrative that just never gets the details right.
My Rating:
