...Every child must someday leave their home
...and faces the many challenges in life.
Challenges that will guide him towards becoming a man.
Maybe this is the best Indonesian action movie so far. It's just like we are watching a Bruce Lee movie but with different actor and different culture. Bruce Lee is replaced by Yuda, the main character of the movie, and the Chinese famous kungfu culture is replaced by the Indonesian traditional martial art,
silat.
The story is about a guy who wanders to the Capital city of Indonesia, Jakarta, dealing with its severity and all its complexities. In Minangkabau, there is a tradition that every man should leave the village to find a better life. It is called
merantau. In Jakarta, fate destined Yuda (Iko Uwais) to meet the orphans, Adit (Yusuf Aulia) and his sister, Astri (Sisca Jessica), who seem to be the victims of illegal human trafficking organization. This organization is led by a stone-hearted European, Ratger (Mads Koudal) and his right-hand Luc (Laurent Buson). The climax is when Yuda has to rescue Astri from Ratger and his men because Ratger thinks that Yuda has taken his potential "product". Yuda has no choice other than fight against those bad people with high adrenalin action and full body contact.
The movie was directed by an English, Gareth Evans. He really loves martial art, and the idea of making this movie was inspired by his documentary movie about the
Pencak Silat. He did the surveys and made a documentary film in West Sumatra. From there, he began to know about
merantau culture.
I love this movie, and I bet you will. Awesome landscapes and good cinematography were perfectly presented on the movie. In short, it is really interesting, entertaining, and exciting. I fully recommend to watch this movie, and you won't regret yourself. I heard that this movie is not distributed only in Indonesia, but also Europe and America. Awesome!!!
