Merantau Review

Coming back into movie reviews now, I’ve decided to start off with a movie I actually quite like. Merantau is a 2009 Indonesian action film, marking the debut of Iko Uwais. Between this and The Raid movies, I’m hoping he has a solid career in film for years to come. Not that I’m giving away too much now, but watching this guy in action is like watching Tony Jaa back in his early days.

We kick off the film in a small village in that idyllic countryside that is “not the city”. Well, that’s unfair. It’s supposed to be a Minang village, although you really need to know your Indonesian culture to pick that up. For the record, I had to look it up. If you didn’t know this going in, it’d be the generic village in any fantasy film that gets stomped 10 minutes in to show the bad guy means business. Fortunately, we’re watching a martial arts film so it’s just that happy place the hero wants to leave. Interestingly our hero, Yuda, doesn’t want to leave because things are peaceful and therefore boring. He’s leaving because it’s a tradition of his people for young men without a clearly defined village role to undertake their merantau (title drop!), or journey to seek knowledge/enlightenment/fortune. Whatever they want really. Again, things I had to look up but it was interesting to learn that going nomadic for a few years is a tradition in this region. Built in quest excuse right there!

Hold up, we’re 10 minutes in and I’m learning stuff that isn’t related to the improper bending of limbs. Yuda is a Silat expert, and for his merantau he wants to move to Jakarta to establish a Silat school. We get couple of scenes with Yuda, his family and his master and they show just how relaxed everyone is about it. Yuda’s family are worried, but not greatly so. His older brother had some undefined bad experience on his merantau, but it’s not used to say “you shouldn’t do this”. Rather, it’s used to try and convince Yuda to be careful. The brief scene between Yuda and his master is a chance to show off some of the traditional silat forms, and it’s also quite relaxed. Just showing off some techniques, and that Yuda is generally a cheerful dude. No pent up aggression, no dark secrets. He’s just a young man who wants to teach people his martial art and see the big city.

Because we’ve taken about 15 minutes to get to Yuda’s arrival in Jakarta (including one scene on a bus with another man who undertook his merantau years ago, and is in no way foreshadowing later events), things go to pieces really fast. On day 1, Yuda finds out the apartment his family bought was torn down, that the school he thought was there doesn’t exist, and some street kid nicks his wallet just to cap off a great start. Fortunately, the kid leads to plot, and plot leads to trouble. Trouble here coming in the form of the kids’ older sister Astrid, and Johnny, the boss of her not-quite-a-strip club. Adit (the kid) thoughtfully led us straight to trouble, as Astrid is basically being beaten in an alley. Yuda intervenes because hero, demonstrating his skill without actually hurting anyone and Astrid swoons at this charming young hero!

Hahaha, kidding. She rips him a new one for costing her a job. Then storms off with Adit, leaving Yuda to ponder nightfall and being homeless. With no other options available, he takes shelter in some giant concrete pipes in a nearby construction site. It sucks, but it does leave him conveniently placed to hear the commotion when Astrid returns the next day to beg Johnny for her job back. Johnny’s not happy about randoms humiliating him while he’s trying to humiliate his girls, but he grudgingly allows Astrid a shot at another gig he has going on the side. At this point Yuda intervenes, and I broadly stop recounting the movie.

I’m doing this because from here, whilst the broad strokes of the movie are reasonably predictable, they’re quite well done and I’d actually encourage anyone interested in action films to watch this movie without me explaining the plot any further. What I will go on about for a bit is how it all comes together. Basically, in the scene above, the gangsters realise that Yuda isn’t actually aggressive, so in the rematch they kick the shit out of him. Once Yuda comes to understand that people outside of a dojo play for keeps, he starts doing the same. From here it’s really interesting because whilst the movie never bludgeons you over the head with it, you do notice that Yuda is only ever in danger during a mass fight if he gets cocky or gets cornered. The choreography goes to great lengths to show Yuda trying to keep mass engagements down to one or two people at a time at most while he rabbits round the scene trying not to get pinned down. It’s a trick Uwais and the director (Gareth Evans) will go on to make great use of in The Raid movies, albeit getting much crazier.

The underworld antagonists of the film are also interesting. Whilst the lead villain is a slightly over the top nut job, his operation and most of the things he does in the film are all very low key. I’m going to compare with a more recent film, Skin Trade. In that movie, we see quite a lot of how they work on screen – not just their dealings, but how they keep their captives in line, break their will etc. In Merantau, a lot of that is implied. You know exactly what’s about to happen during certain scenes, but then the focus will shift elsewhere. In my opinion at least it retains the impact of what’s happening to the victims without being voyeuristic about it. It keeps everything fairly understated without leaving any doubt as to what’s happened, which I think is a good way to go about it. If I want to have torture porn shoved in my face I’ll watch an Eli Roth film.

The way the characters act throughout is also quite interesting. Yuda never loses his own little charm, but after that second day he also completely stops holding back during a fight. When you learn more about Astrid and Adit, you understand why she was desperate to keep any job, whereas in a normal film of this genre she’d have jumped straight into the hero’s bed about 10 minutes after the yelling (I’m eyeing off a lot of Van Damme and Seagal films here…). And Yuda never actually tries to get her into bed (his lack of a bed throughout the film notwithstanding), he’s just trying to help Astrid and Adit. When it all comes together, the character development is nicely understated, and the film doesn’t feel the need to hang big neon signs over everything that happens. It just trusts the viewer to keep up and pay attention. It also helps that the actors are all decent at what they do, and don’t try to push beyond their particular talents. Well, except for the overacting villain but he’s taking on all of the crazy at once, so it kind of works.

The end package is quite a good little film. The Raid movies were certainly far crazier, and in a visceral sense more entertaining, but Merantau is I think one of the best films in the martial arts genre. As a complete package, it all comes together very well and I’d heartily recommend it to anyone who likes action films in general, not just martial arts films specifically.