The inefficiency of government often leads to common people getting the short end of the stick. Director Angga Dwimas Sasongko’s 13 Bombs deals with a terrorist group trying to take down the Indonesian government by planting bombs all over Jakarta. Except for the painfully long runtime, the film actually ticks a few boxes for a good thriller. The cast is solid, and once the movie gets over the premise, it makes for a good watch if you’re into agents scrambling to save a city with the underlying tension of finding out who the mole is.
Spoilers Ahead
What happens in the movie?
The film opens with a commentary on how the global economic decline is impacting the Indonesian economy and exports. We see a bunch of terrorists having a full-fledged gunfight in the middle of the street to rob a bank vehicle full of money. However, after killing many officers and guards, the terrorists leave the money for the commoners. Soon after this, the Bureau of Counterterrorism’s servers get hacked, and the leader of the terrorists issues a warning. They have planted 13 bombs across Jakarta, and they demand 100 bitcoins from the government. The group intends to set one bomb off every hour, and they mention a specific crypto trading platform, Indodax, on which the transaction has to be made. The agency takes Indodax’s founders, Oscar and William, in to interrogate them. Funnily enough, the movie uses the real names of the founders and their company. The duo explain that they’re not involved with the terrorists, and Indodax being an anonymous trading platform is the reason behind the terrorists using it. The agency sends the bitcoin to the terrorists, and it’s clear that the terrorists are faking their actual location to lure them in. When the force tracks them down, all they find is a laptop mocking them. Across the street, Emil, the most experienced agent, sees the Jakarta Stock Exchange blowing up, and the terrorists have drawn first blood. The terrorists hack the agency’s server once again, threatening that this is only the beginning, and they’re not going to stop until they take the oligarchy down.
Why did the terrorists kidnap William and Oscar?
Oscar and William are under constant pressure from Damaskus, the chief of the agency, to come up with a lead on the terrorists. They were both clueless, and even when they tracked the location, it only gave them a front-row seat to the destruction. Damaskus is desperate to put an end to this affair, and he initiates the Yudha protocol. He asks his people to override any rules or barriers of bureaucracy, and he suggests the use of the spyware Pegasus to tap into every device they need to. Damaskus threatens to frame Oscar and William in a money laundering case if they don’t prove to be useful. When Damaskus goes to visit the president, he leaves Karin in charge. Karin allows Oscar and William to visit their office so that they could try and find something from their main servers. However, when William looks into the system, he finds a message from the terrorists, saying that they’re allies. William’s girlfriend, Agnes, helps the duo to secretly escape and try to track the terrorists down. Their dumb plan obviously works out until they reach the location. The terrorists abduct William and Oscar, while Agnes observes everything from afar and informs Karin about it. The leader of the terrorists, Ismail, sits face-to-face with William and Oscar. Now the twist is, it was them who inspired him to take down the system. A few years back, Ismail attended one of Indodax’s seminars where Oscar elaborated on how digital currency is safer and more efficient than traditional currency. Ismail wants the duo to help him build a new economy from scratch after they’re done destroying the current hierarchy. Meanwhile, Karin is suspended by Damaskus for not reporting to him, and William and Oscar are now fugitives on the run.
Why are the terrorists bombing Jakarta?
Ismail is driven by the injustice the system has forced on him. He was in the military when his wife joined a company named Surya Fund Union. She sold their products to their neighbors and other people they knew, but the company was sued for embezzlement, and society forced her to take the blame. She killed herself, and soon after, their kid died as well. Ismail believes that only people with money and power are responsible for the death of thousands of people like his wife. Ismail’s army of terrorists is full of people who have been wronged by the powerful. Ismail’s right-hand man, Waluyo, is the one who planted the bombs.
How do William and Oscar deactivate the bombs?
Oscar is somewhat convinced to help Ismail. Oscar’s dad is also in a lot of debt, and on a human level he related to what Ismail went through. But William has to fight with him to make him realize how wrong it’d be to help them. Ismail then blows up a train, killing 12 civilians. His next target is the airport, but none of his people knew about this before. Waluyo protests against it and makes his point of how killing civilians can’t be the way to a new beginning, but by now Ismail feels too powerful to back down. Waluyo is desperate to help, and he teams up with William and Oscar to deactivate the bombs one by one. After deactivating every bomb, they notice that there’s still one left. Ismail shoots his partner in cold blood, and Oscar and William call Karin for help, using Waluyo’s cell.
What’s the 13th bomb?
The 13th bomb is not physical, but malware designed to wipe the money out from the richest organizations and companies in the country. Before dying, Waluyo told William that the malware can only be activated using the main server of the bureau and that they have a mole in the agency who’s going to help Ismail to activate it. Gita tracks Ismail’s cell when he makes a call to tell someone that their last resort is to begin the ‘scorched earth’ scenario. Damaskus sends Emil with orders to kill, and Emil takes a large force to capture the terrorists. He also finds the possible mole in the agency, a guy named Fajar. Damaskus confronts him in the washroom and tells him to follow the lead Gita discovered and do some actual work. Deep down, even Damaskus knew that he couldn’t be the actual mole, as it requires way more personality and courage to cross an intelligence agency and work for the enemy.
How do William and Oscar save the country?
At the factory, Emil and his forces go in all guns blazing. Karin and Agnes are also inside the factory, looking for the boys. Seeing his people getting killed one by one, Ismail takes the matter into his own hands. He starts wiping out the agency’s forces pretty effortlessly, something you’d expect in a superhero movie. But even he ends up in trouble when Gita catches him off guard. Surprise, Gita kills her fellow agents and frees Ismail, who gives her the pendrive, the 13th bomb, which is set to change the future of the country. Emil catches them in action, and he and Ismail engage in combat in a scene that is by far one of the coolest fighting sequences of this year. Both the men end up shooting each other, with Ismail barely making it out alive. Karin finds Emil, and he tells Karin about Gita while taking his last few breaths. Karin and Agnes eventually find the boys too, and they head towards the agency to stop Gita.
Gita gets access to the agency, despite the restriction on her identification, thanks to a guard who’s also in with the terrorists. Fajar discovers the truth about Gita, he tries to shoot her while his legs are shivering, but Gita shoots him instead. Gita accesses the supercomputer, which is connected to all the servers across the country, and just when Karin reaches there to warn her, she activates the malware. Agnes shoots Gita as soon as she clicks the button, and William and Oscar manage to deactivate the malware after several minutes of screaming and shouting. Back at the factory, we see Ismail crawling out of the building, where Damaskus was waiting to shoot him in the head. The malware was called New Hope, and with Ismail, the New Hope also ceases to exist.
