Runtime: 109 minutes
Directed by: Adrian Teh
Starring: Hairul Azreen, Fify Azmi, Dain Said, Hilal Azman, Henley Hii
From: Many Malaysian companies
Until a few days ago I had no knowledge of this motion picture; the draw for me was not just its country of origin being Malaysia (a country I hadn't seen any films from before) but also it was discovering that a co-star was Yayan Ruhian of The Raid fame... who also did the action choreography. That was plenty enticing for me.
The plot itself is standard: a young man-formerly a famous martial artist in the area-returns home after time in the military. He has to defend his family from a local gangland leader (who does illegal activities that is fronted by a condom factory) after his sister caused trouble at an underground MMA event. Their dad also works at that factory and it should come as no surprise that the workers are treated rather poorly. Family is the key component of this movie, which leads to a rather corny moment in the final act that clashes with the rest of Wira.
Other than that, it was a standard movie inspired by The Raid-in that category, it's not the best or the worst of its type-which at least provided the requisite thrills that genre fans desire. After the build-up in the first half, the back half has plenty of fights, sometimes involving machetes and swords. It was shot in a clear manner with the camera moving all about, but not in a nauseous Olivier Megaton fashion. Perhaps there were shots that would have benefited from the camera being elsewhere as it would have hid a blow clearly not landing; that said those flubs did not ruin the experience. Of course, Ruhian's extended fight was the highlight, although there is a quality brawl on a bus and another nice sequence was seeing many dudes get wrecked in their apartment complex.
While it presents familiar beats and only a small amount of the scenic Malaysian rural life was presented (otherwise it was generic city life and warehouses) it was still nice to hear the language and see that family is the keystone of life, at least in this universe. Then again, this also has the siblings' dad have a machete stuck in a flowerpot just outside their apartment...
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