Oppa movie hopes to raise awareness on online scams, love scams

KUALA LUMPUR - The Royal Malaysian Police Force (PDRM) is stepping up its anti-scam campaign efforts with a first ever collaboration with a production company, Dream Film Sdn Bhd, to produce the first anti-scam awareness movie in Malaysia titled 'Oppa'.

Bukit Aman Commercial Crime Investigation Department (JSJK) assistant director (intelligence) Supt Mohd Faizal Zainal said the film, which is based on true stories of online love scams, is one of PDRM's new initiative to educate the public through an alternative medium and raise awareness on online scams.

"We at PDRM always welcome any form of prevention for the community, especially through various mechanisms. We offer prevention all the time in conventional ways, such as talks or video clips.

"However, this time we are taking the entertainment route because we believe that the community is closer to what we are trying to convey," he told Bernama after the launch of the Oppa movie yesterday.

Oppa tells the story of a primary school teacher who is looking for love and meets the man of her dreams online, unaware that she is falling victim to a love scam syndicate.

What is even more interesting is that the 90-minute movie which cost almost RM2 million, features more than 50 police personnel who are really attached to PDRM, including Mohd Faizal, in a real action against scam syndicates.

According to him, the challenge is to write an appropriate script based on the guidelines given so as not to be seen as scheming police officers or being too casual to the point of breaking protocol.

"Of course acting is difficult because this area is not our forte... a professional actor might only need two or three takes for a scene, but we have to do up to 30 takes,” he said.

At the same time, Faizal hopes that the film can make the public aware of the scams that are happening around us.

The director of the Oppa movie, Choong Lin Loong, 44, said the rising number of scam victims inspired him to produce the film.

"From what I have read, the modus operandi of all these fraud offences is almost the same, but why are there still more victims? I made this film not just to make profit but to raise awareness and save the society from becoming victims of scams," he said.

At the same time, Choong is optimistic that the film will be a success, even if it is only cast with new talent, including a new actor from South Korea, TaeOh Jang.

"We held an open casting to find suitable actors... Originally, we wanted to find someone who looks good like a South Korean man in the casting, but we couldn't find anyone.

"Fortunately, we had connections with an artist management agency from South Korea and asked them to help on the condition that the new talent must be proficient in English," he said.

Besides TaeOh Jang, Dream Film Sdn Bhd's debut film also stars singer and influencer Jacqueline Goh, Lee Qi, Amanda Tan and Sadiq M Jamil. The film is due to be released in cinemas in May. - BERNAMA