Merantau

An Indonesian martial arts film. Yuda is leaving his village in West Sumatra. In Minangkabau custom a young man goes away to make something of himself and comes back a man; the word for it gives the film its title. He goes to Jakarta with an address. The address turns out to be a building site and the person is gone. He sleeps rough. Then he sees a man hitting a woman in the street and steps in, and that decision costs him everything for the rest of the film. The woman is a dancer in a club. Her younger brother is a street child. The men Yuda hit work for a trafficking operation that moves women out of the country. From there the film is a rescue. Warehouses, a lift shaft, a container yard and a long fight in a shipping crate. What the narrative is interested in is not action but the custom in its title: the film keeps returning to what the boy promised his mother, and the ending is read against that promise rather than against the fight. The fighting is silat, an Indonesian form, and specifically a style that keeps the fighter low with sweeping arms. The film was one of the first to put it in front of an international audience. Iko Uwais plays Yuda. He was working as a delivery driver at a telephone company and training at a silat school when he was found at a demonstration; this was his first film. Gareth Evans, a Welsh director working in Indonesia, wrote and directed. He and Uwais went on to work together again. Who it is for: anyone who wants to see a martial art with no imitation in it. Who it is not for: anyone impatient with story; the middle is slow and the acting is uneven.