CHELOT (2026)
Genre: Action
Director: Adrian Teh
Cast: Beto Kusyairy, Shukri Yahaya, Shaheizy Sam, Nadhir Nasar, Alicia Amin, Azhan Rani, Theebaan G
Runtime: 2 hr 5 mins
Rating: NC16 (Violence)
Released By: Golden Village
Official Website:
Opening Day: 3 Sept 2026
Synopsis: After a high-stakes operation ends in disaster, claiming the lives of several officers, the Royal Malaysia Police Special Operations Unit launches a relentless manhunt for a sophisticated weapons smuggling network. Inspector Haqqim, grappling with career setbacks, financial strain, and a fractured family, struggles to prove he still belongs in the elite unit.
When he crosses paths with Azraf, the trusted right-hand of crime boss Dato’ Bakri, Haqqim is thrust into a deadly game between the criminal underworld and law enforcement - where every choice could cost him his career, his family, or his life.
Movie Review:
Who would have thought that the director of The Wedding Diary harboured ambitions to become Malaysia’s answer to Dante Lam? Yet after PASKAL, Wira and MALBATT: Misi Bakara, Adrian Teh’s transformation from romantic-comedy filmmaker to action specialist can no longer be regarded as an eccentric detour. With Chelot, he embraces the cop thriller with such muscular confidence that the comparison no longer feels fanciful.
This is easily one of the most impressive cop thrillers Malaysian cinema has produced, which is no mean feat given the increasingly assured genre entries to have emerged in recent years, not least Blood Brothers: Bara Naga. Chelot does not disguise its influences: the divided loyalties of Infernal Affairs, the urban firepower of Michael Mann and the breathless escalation associated with Dante Lam are all discernible. But Teh is not merely photocopying his predecessors. He relocates that familiar grammar onto Malaysian streets, institutions and anxieties, and directs it with an urgency that feels entirely his own.
At the centre is Royal Malaysia Police Special Operations Unit Inspector Haqqim (Shukri Yahaya). After an ambush on an arms sale goes disastrously wrong, leaving fellow officers dead and his own standing badly damaged, Haqqim is already vulnerable: he is burdened by debt, family strain and the fear that he no longer belongs among the elite. That vulnerability brings him into the orbit of crime boss Dato’ Bakri (Shaheizy Sam)and his trusted lieutenant Azraf (Beto Kusyairy). Ostensibly coerced into becoming their informant, Haqqim agrees to feed the syndicate police intelligence so Bakri can remain ahead of the dragnet.
Naturally, matters are nowhere near as simple as they first appear. Is Haqqim a compromised officer, an infiltrator, a desperate family man or some unstable combination of all three? Teh keeps shifting the answer, turning the inspector’s predicament into more than a mechanical exercise in double-crosses. Haqqim is repeatedly forced to confront what his uniform, badge and oath mean when loyalty to the institution threatens the people closest to him. Even the title becomes part of the film’s game of concealed identities and competing allegiances.
The second half is where Chelot truly cuts loose. Bakri’s plan involving state-of-the-art weaponry smuggled from Thailand expands the conspiracy; inconvenient revelations overturn what we thought we understood; and alliances fracture with gratifying regularity. Not every twist is equally elegant – one or two can be anticipated well before the reveal, while the screenplay occasionally mistakes piling on information for deepening its characters – but Teh never permits the machinery to stall. Across its 125 minutes, the film sustains an edgy, forward-driving momentum that makes its implausibilities easy to forgive.
Teh also directs the action with considerable flair and assurance. The film barrels through gun battles, knife attacks, vehicle pursuits and explosions, yet the violence rarely collapses into incoherent noise. The opening gives Nadhir Nasar a ferocious showcase, including a startlingly fluid burst of close-quarters knife work, while the larger firefights retain a clear sense of geography and consequence. Teh has said that roughly 95 per cent of the effects were achieved practically, and the weight of real pyrotechnics and physical stunt work can be felt, even if the occasional digital blood effect looks less convincing.
The undisputed centrepiece is a single-camera action sequence running five minutes and 19 seconds across a 1.9-kilometre route in central Kuala Lumpur. Recognised by the Malaysia Book of Records, the shot is not simply a technical stunt advertised in advance and forgotten afterwards. Teh uses its uninterrupted movement to lock the viewer inside the confusion, passing among vehicles, armed men and rapidly shifting pockets of danger without sacrificing legibility. Its difficulty is inseparable from its excitement, and it deserves to go down as one of the landmark action scenes in Malaysian cinema.
The performances give all this machinery a human pulse. Shukri makes Haqqim’s shame, panic and divided instincts palpable without turning him into a bundle of obvious tells. Beto Kusyairy gives Azraf controlled charisma and welcome ambiguity, suggesting a man who understands both loyalty and its market price. Best of all is Shaheizy Sam as Bakri. Rather than relying on tantrums, he makes the crime lord frighteningly composed; threats emerge in conversational tones, as though violence were merely another administrative decision. The character’s history and motives could have been fleshed out further, but Sam supplies the menace the writing sometimes leaves implicit.
At a time when Hong Kong cinema has largely retreated from the contemporary cop thriller it once dominated, Malaysian filmmakers appear increasingly willing to occupy the space and put their own stamp on it. Chelot not only confirms Malaysia as a credible successor to that tradition; it reinforces why Teh may be one of the most energetic, versatile and, we dare say, talented commercial directors in this part of the world. There are rough edges and perhaps one betrayal too many, but few regional action films move with this much conviction. From The Wedding Diary to this: who would have thought?
Movie Rating:
(A blistering, twist-filled cop thriller, Chelot confirms Adrian Teh as one of Southeast Asia’s most accomplished action directors and Malaysia as a worthy heir to Hong Kong genre cinema)
Review by Gabriel Chong
