Merantau Warrior

Yuda [IKO] leaves his village town to become a man and to seek his destiny. He is a Silat Harimau martial arts pro, however he also seems to follow the will of Allah and needs to complete his rite of passage. In the first part of the movie Yuda arrives and finds life difficult. We're introduced to another character on the trip from his town to Jakarta. It's pretty obvious they're gonna face off later. But, this guy tells him the world is hard and he sees the naivity of Yuda. After being robbed, Yuda defends a strip bar girl Astri. The mafia boss looking after her runs a European human trafficking ring which is run by a very cold Ratger plus Lars, who are also martial arts pros! Yuda rescues Astri quite a few times from Ratger and the whole of the mafia gang wants to get Astri and kill Yuda. The pluses for this movie is that it doesn't use wires [maybe once] and the action scenes are long without cutting! Excellent direction and empathy for the main character gives the movie more pacing than jackie chan's movies. Still, it borrows heavily from Jackie Chan's style of a simple guy getting messed up with the bad guys! The key difference is the tragic ending. You get a massive and almost believable boss fight and tonnes of stunts [especially guys falling face first into a storage container that makes you want to say 'ouch'! Like Ong Bak, this movie is class and although we have cheese moments its a lot better directed, paced and fought out than its US counterparts! The fight scenes as with all martial arts movies are great and movies from Indonesia, Korea and Thailand are better executed than their chinese kung-fu by wire rivals! This is a martial art movie that'll appeal to partners as well as a boys night-in + beer! For this reason a 4 star, but I'd give it 6.5 as compared to say non-martial art movies! Enjoy!