Java Jive

We watched Merantau (2009) because Yayan Ruhian caught Ms. Spenser’s attention in John Wick 3. I’ve seen him and crew in The Raid, but had this queued up for just such an occasion.

 It starts in rural Sumatra with Star Iki Uwais practicing solo Pencak Silat, an Indonesian martial arts style. He goes home to his mother and brother and they talk about his upcoming merantau, the ritual that men in his region take part in. It means traveling to the big city and gaining experience and success. His brother came home from his merantau, which put him in disgrace, but his mother assures him he can come home whenever he wants.

He gets to Jakarta and finds it to be a hard place, and no one wants to hire him to teach Silat. When a little kid steals his wallet, he chases him down and finds the kid’s sister being shaken down by her pimp, so he intervenes. That gets the girl fired from her dancing gig, and doesn’t appreciate it. Of course, he has to save her many more times, in bigger and bigger fights against worse and worse opponents.

This is a regular martial arts movie in a lot of ways. It doesn’t have the relentless drive that director Gareth Evans later achieved with Iko Uwais in The Raid, which influenced the current crop of action movies like JW3. The fights are very good - Silat is an interesting style, even though we don’t see a kerambit in action or much in the way of stick fighting. But the emphasis is mostly on the suffering Uwais endures while still taking on the bad guys and protecting the girl and her brother.

Ruhian’s role was a small one - a guy like Uwais who came to the big city, but sold his skills to the mob. His fight with Uwais in the elevator is significant, but maybe not the best in the movie.