✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Singapore, Germany, France · 2016
1h 36m
Director Boo Junfeng
Starring Fir Rahman, Wan Hanafi Su, Mastura Ahmad, Boon Pin Koh
Genre Drama
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Aiman, a 28-year-old Malay correctional officer, is transferred to the territory’s top prison. There, he bonds with Rahim, a sergeant who is the prison's chief executioner. Rahim can help his apprentice rise in the ranks--but he has a terrible secret about Aiman's past, one which Aiman must overcome if he wants a future as chief executioner.
The Hollywood Reporter by Boyd van Hoeij
One of Apprentice’s strongest selling points is how, in a very compact yet pleasingly dense way, it takes viewers into both the world of the executioners and the executed criminals’ family members who remain behind, two often almost ignored categories in films touching on capital punishment.
Writer-director Boo Junfeng casually reinvigorates the prison drama, boiling its elements down to their primal essence.
The Film Stage by Ethan Vestby
While not without the occasional jolt of a sudden execution, the film feels so wholly tell and not show. Its left-wing politics about toxic masculinity bleeding into the justice system are so much a given that it’s just a dead-weight experience to watch.
Screen International by Lisa Nesselson
Tightly focused and ambitious in its multiple themes, the tale touches on how the death penalty radiates out to affect the living.
In a finale rife with twisted feelings of resentment, fury, and self-loathing, the film transforms into a grave meditation on the corrosive shadow cast by the decisions, and crimes, of yesterday.
The movie feels a little too sparse and literal in places.
The New York Times by Stephen Holden
At first Apprentice seems to be a basic revenge film in which Aiman stalks the man who killed his father. But it becomes psychologically more complex.
A vivid display of conflict between passion and art.
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