Terbang opens at 116 Malaysian cinemas, and Karamjit Singh calls it 60 per cent true to his life

The man the film is about drove the stunts himself. Terbang opened on Thursday at 116 of the 125 cinemas in this site's listings, with 2,125 sessions across all seven chains in the week to 25 September, which makes a Malaysian rally film the widest release in the country, ahead of Resident Evil at 109. Karamjit Singh, the driver they called the 'Flying Sikh', watched it at the gala on Monday and gave Malay Mail his verdict: about 60 per cent true to his life.

What is true and what is drama

Malay Mail's report from the gala at TGV Suria KLCC names the scenes drawn from real events: moments with his wife, misunderstandings with his rally teammates, and an international tournament where rivals suspected he was cheating because they were sure his car had to be illegal. The rest is dramatised. "It is a true story and not fiction", Karamjit told the paper, and he hopes audiences take one thing from it: that his team never gave up, even the year the car broke down and still won at the first attempt.

Free Malaysia Today's review sets out the story the film makes of that. Irfan Zaini plays Ajeet, a rally driver sidelined by tragedy who has become a mechanic; when his wife Lisa, played by Shweta Sekhon, is diagnosed with cancer, he returns to the struggling PERT team and a hot-headed co-driver, Wai Kitt, played by Jack Tan. Zizan Razak is the engineer Imran and Namron the team's leader, Rahim. Terence Toh's verdict is a warm one with reservations: an entertaining crowd-pleaser with well-executed rally scenes, some wooden performances, and a rift between the leads that heals a little too quickly.

Three months of rally training, and a 64-year-old stunt double

Bernama, which interviewed Irfan in July, has the detail that explains the racing. He spent three months in rally driving training and time with Karamjit learning how he walks, talks and drives. Several of the film's hardest driving sequences were done by Karamjit himself, still competing at 64, standing in as his own actor's stunt double. The production used Karamjit's real cars, filmed in New Zealand as well as at home, and shot in an EON workshop that was demolished after filming. Malay Mail adds Sepang and Perlis to the locations, and names the producers: Astro Shaw with EJJ Films, Enotech Pictures and Aventure Space, with WooHoo Pictures as the production house.

Berita Harian caught Irfan after the gala, and he admitted he cried watching himself, which he had not expected of a racing film. It was Karamjit who recommended him for the part, he told the paper, before the director had seen any of his work; hearing the driver say he was the right man felt, in his words, like winning an Oscar.

Where to see it, and in what

The film is rated 13 and runs 135 minutes in the chains' listings. Most of this week's sessions are standard halls, but 66 are in Dolby Atmos and 45 in 4DX, the motion-seat format Berita Harian describes with its wind, water and scent effects, at GSC 1 Utama, GSC IOI City Mall in Putrajaya, GSC LaLaport BBCC, GSC Southkey Mall and GSC Paradigm Mall in Johor Bahru. For a film about driving, the seats that move are the obvious choice, and 45 sessions across five cinemas will fill on a Saturday. Selangor has the most sessions of any state this week, then Kuala Lumpur and Johor; Saturday alone has 498.

The other Malaysian film that opened on Thursday is Woo Ming Jin's The Fox King, at 38 cinemas across GSC, TGV and FST. Malay Mail reports it came home after Toronto, Busan and Udine, with a gala on 9 September and a special screening at GSC Mid Valley on the 18th with its cast; the Fox King page has its sessions.

The Terbang page lists every cinema and session with each format marked, and the showtimes page puts every cinema's Terbang times side by side. Sessions are refreshed from each chain once an hour, and the chains reallocate halls on Thursdays.