BCA Pocket Valas feat. Joe Taslim

There's a specific joy in photographing someone who already carries a cinematic presence before you've even raised the camera. Joe Taslim has spent years building an international action career, from a Jakarta police sergeant in "The Raid" to a Hollywood villain to Sub-Zero himself. That history isn't just biography, it's visual currency. BCA Pocket Valas wanted to spend it.

The concept was playful at its core: recreate the poster language of blockbuster action films, but populate them with Joe promoting foreign currency features instead of saving the world. It's the kind of idea that sounds simple until you're the one trying to execute it with precision. Parody only works if the audience recognizes the reference instantly. Too subtle and the joke disappears. Too on the nose and it reads as knockoff rather than homage.

Each key visual borrowed from a specific film's DNA. One echoed the ensemble muscle and stance of "Fast & Furious," Joe positioned against a city skyline with the same coiled confidence those posters trade in. Another pulled from "Top Gun," aviator sunglasses, backlit haze, the swagger of someone who belongs somewhere most people don't. A third leaned into "Taken," moody and shadowed, the controlled intensity of a man who means business. Every one of these had to walk a careful line: familiar enough to trigger recognition of the genre, but composed so Joe's own face and presence stayed unmistakably clear. The brand ambassador needed to read as himself first, action hero reference second.

Lighting and styling shifted per poster to match its cinematic source, cooler and harder for the espionage-adjacent shots, warmer and more golden for the aspirational travel-driven ones. What stayed consistent throughout was the technical discipline. Parody photography still has to survive as commercial photography. The product had to remain legible, the app interface clear, the messaging readable even while everything around it performed as movie marketing.

Beyond the four main visuals, we built out contextual key visuals designed to live inside people's actual travel journeys, appearing on airport screens, taxi headrests, unskippable pre-roll ads, booking platforms. These leaned less into overt movie parody and more into practical reassurance, Joe as a familiar, trustworthy face showing up exactly where someone might be thinking about currency exchange. One creative billboard treatment pushed the concept further with a car breaking out of the frame entirely, but that particular execution came together through 3D rather than photography, a reminder that even within one campaign, different problems call for different tools.

What made this project satisfying wasn't just the wit of the concept. It was watching an actor's actual career become the visual shorthand for a banking feature, proof that the right ambassador doesn't just lend a face to a brand, he lends an entire cinematic vocabulary that audiences already trust.

Adhitya Himawan
Co-founder and photographer of HIRA Imaji, Jakarta.