Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts

To its credit, the film eschews excess gore and mayhem, largely making its points in more subtly incisive ways.

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts recalls the oaters of Sergio Leone and his brethren, all right, but it upends the usual male concerns for some serious and satisfying feminist payback.

It's one of those features from a distant part of the globe that seems like it may have been created primarily for Western art houses and festivals, where its exemplary direction and feminist theme are indeed likely to win Surya new fans.

Working with the cinematographer Yunus Pasolang, Ms. Surya gives "Marlina" a stark, steady, captivating look that keeps you largely engaged even when the story and your attention drift.

A film of uneasy grandeur, at once offhand and gently mythic...

The film is enlivened by an acute grasp of the impossibilities that abused Indonesian women face in a society predicated on their continued physical and emotional subjugation to men.

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts is a brilliant female-driven arthouse/grindhouse rape-revenge Western that manages to endear, repulse, emotionally stir, mesmerize and propel in the best of ways.

"Marlina" is a film with very few faults, that manages to present a completely different take on the western, through an artful, meaningful and quite entertaining approach.

"The film stands out in its treatment an active female protagonist not immediately supplanting male power, but slowly struggling to assume it."

Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts is simple at a glance, nuanced under scrutiny, and is a damn fine time at the movies.