Headshot

Headshot (2016)

Runtime: 118 minutes

Directed by: Kimo Stamboel/Timo Tjahjanto

Starring: Iko Uwais, Chelsea Islan, Sunny Pang, Very Tri Yulisman, Julie Estelle

From: Several Indonesian Companies

In this late night post, I talk about quite the martial arts extravaganza:

No wonder the IMDb plot description ends with the phrase “Violence ensues. Sweet, sweet violence.” Believe me, it does.

Yesterday I signed up to Netflix again for a month; there are plenty of reasons why I am not consistently a member. To be honest, each time I sign up again the service seems to be worse than the last time I left. Still, there is programming of interest; it won't be too long before The Night Comes for Us will be viewed... rave reviews have been seen by me. However, many of the main players did Headshot first and as I hadn't seen it before... it would not be right to not check this out first.

The plot is not too terribly complicated or original: a mysterious man washes up on the beach and he has amnesia. This is after he wakes up from a two month coma. It's not quite as preposterous as it was in Seagal's Hard to Kill, where he's in a 7 year coma and after not much effort he is once again a martial arts expert kicking ass. But like in Hard to Kill he gets to know his nurse, although here it's just friendship instead of a torrid love affair. Anyhow, a lot of people are looking to kill the guy called Ishmael (the cute nurse was reading Moby Dick, you see, and randomly gave him that name) but as Ishmael is played by the awesome SOB known as Iko Uwais, he beats up those people, usually in glorious ways.

Headshot is on the silly side but to me that does not matter too much as this does deliver on the violence. It is rather brutal and over the top but it does deliver. There's plenty of brawls, gunplay, martial arts, and all the rest. The villain (Lee) is definitely made to be pretty despicable so it is very easy to root for Ishmael against the bad guys... and girl. This is not glorious like The Raid: Redemption but I did prefer this to The Raid 2, which was pretentious, had action that was too ridiculous, did not need to be 150 minutes long and had a half-assed Asian crime story which was done much better by others. Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man were two of the preposterous elements yet I can't complain about the performers in the role... well, Julie Estelle and Very Tri Yulisman are also in Headshot and they provide two of the most memorable scenes.

There is also pretty Indonesian scenery to admire and a modern electronic score; those that enjoy such things as The Raid films and The Night Comes for Us should check this out for more of the same.