MERANTAU

Directed by: Gareth Huw Evans

If Yuda is about to leave his homeland for such a long time shouldn't he take a big bag containing his clothes and life necessities instead of a small bag? why would Yuda sleep on a construction site if he could easily sleep in any mosque in Jakarta (as long as you ask permission first, and I believe it is easy to be allowed to sleep in a mosque as long as you are clean and nicely behaved) since a mosque is better place to sleep instead of some construction site. Why does Yuda's shirt always look neat every time he finished fighting? Why does the blood dripped into the shirts of the character in this film doesn't look like red at all? And last but not least, I think it is impossible to make a phone call to Bukittinggi from Jakarta from a coin pay phone.

But you know what, those plot holes are slightly forgiven since the action scenes here are amazing, I even think to put as many superlatives as possible for the action scenes alone. The filmmaker surely puts hard effort to make us awed and inspired by the fighting scenes with tight paced editing.

Iko Uwais is Yuda, a young man from Bukittinggi, West Sumatra. He master the local martial arts, silat Harimau. As most of men from West Sumatra (or Minangkabau) Yuda wanted to begin his 'merantau' (going away from home to be a man, learn new things abroad and back home bringing his experience), a traditional custom which until now still practiced by many men from Sumatra.

But Jakarta is not as nice as Yuda's village, he has difficulties finding any job, the guy he met on the bus to Jakarta chose the job on the dark side and Yuda, like it or not, has to save Astri (Sisca Jessica) who is trapped inside a ring of human trafficking headed by the wildly psychotic, Ratger (Mads Koudal) and his right-hand man Lars (Laurent Buson). As expected fighting ensues between him and gangs of nameless thugs and ended with a climatic battle between Yuda against Lars and Ratger.

At first I thought it would be another clone of Ong Bak, but it turns out to be a whole new film, a good one, reminding me that Indonesia hasn't made any decent action films since years. Iko Uwais is the 21st century Indonesian action hero, our own version of Tony Jaa (Iko still keep his shirt intact during the whole action here by the way).

I like the beginning of the film, although slow paced, but shows how close Yuda is to his small family. Here, even the acting of Christine Hakim as Yuda's mother alone is worth watching. For those who didn't speak Indonesian, some of the dialogue is in Minang language, which is a surprise for me but not a big deal.