Sorry, this movie sucks

Don't listen to the negative reviews

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Yuda lived in Sumatra with his family, who were hardworking and worked on the rice field. However, Yuda had grown up and it was time to move on and find his own way in life and he wanted to become a silat teacher in Jakarta, but the challenges he faces will make him disregard his dream and help a girl and her younger brother get away from the evils of treacherous men who threaten their well being. Hence, the journey that Yuda takes is action packed, benevolent, and heroic. I really liked this film because it truly shows the compassion of people from different standpoints in life. For example, Yuda decides to help Astri by pushing off her boss as he abuses her and takes advantage of her weekly salary from work in which would have been disregarded due to the fact she needed any kind of money anyways to support herself and her little brother. The only part of the film I did not understand was the business that Ratger and his partner were apart of and what their relationship was to each other. The elements of the film that indicated that it was not American, were the elements of the lack of technology and hybrid sport-like cars and high end city like structures and no explosions of any sort. The global perspective that I received from the film Merantau was that not every family decides to keep all their children and I don't mean by abortion. Moreover, in the film Astri tells Yuda that her family abandoned her and her little brother and kept their other 3 siblings and left them to starve and die and I would have never imagined that a parent could succumb to that thought process. If I were to put myself into any of the characters shoes it would have been Yuda and I would not have done anything differently because of the lack of police or societal presence to help 2 young people like this and I would not have changed the ending either because it shows the raw imagery of what a hero actually is and most heroes are martyrs.

I thought that Merantau was a wonderful film to watch. I enjoyed the martial arts aspect of it extremely, and I felt that the story was well written as well. I found it interesting that they decided to take on the idea of human trafficking. I felt like it tied in well with the story and had an accurate portrayal of the situation on human trafficking. However, I felt like I wasn't fully understanding the situation. One thing that threw me off was the lack of fire arms in the group of human traffickers. I felt like more than two of them would have guns, and the fact that they completely emptied their clips into a man seemed strange and abnormal.

Admittedly, I just bought COLD this for three reasons: a recommendation, I liked The Raid and damnit, Iko Uwais is so hot. Unfortunately, though, like The Raid's incredibly inferior sequel, this movie was so light on action, heavy on attempts at heart – though the climax worked perfectly and uninteresting and clichéd plot points, I'm going to have to watch The Raid again just to get my Gareth Evans/Iko Uwais action fix. (Luckily, I bought this plus The Raid on Bluray simultaneously.) On the positive side, the movie's very well shot – this man, Evans, knows what he's doing and when the action's on screen, it's fun. Sadly, it just takes way too long to get there. Worth one viewing and then just jump back into The Raid.

I went on watching this movie without reading anything about it before. So I didn't know what to expect.The movie has a promising beginning, where we see Yuda (Iko Uwais) practicing Silat in a beautiful natural setting, introduced by the soft voice of his mother. Later on we meet Yudas family and learn about the deep meaning and importance of the "Merantau". We learn that the "Merantau" is an important part of the life of every boy, a transition from childhood to adult. We see Yuda visiting his Silat guru for a last humble "training fight" and to get blessings before he is leaving home to begin his "Merantau".This left me with an impression of an upcoming deep and philosophical movie, where you take part in the "inner journey" and the development of Yudas character.Unfortunately the whole movie develops in a completely different direction. When leaving home, Yuda takes the next bus on a long trip to a big city. Finding out that the address he was given is now a construction site he decides spending his nights in concrete tubes laying on the yard.Instead of a thoughtful and/or philosophical movie, from now on we see Yuda chasing down bad guys in a default "yet another-martial arts-action flick"-manner, with mediocre fights choreography and an obvious predictable plot.**** Serious spoilers ****Saving a GoGo-girl and her young brother from a panderer gets him in trouble with a bunch of white-slavers. Eventually he destroys the whole organization on his own ... Only to get himself killed in the end, by the last "super bad guy" he left unattended alive and crawling on the ground, to focus his attention on freeing Astri from the shipping container.The whole death scene of Yuda afterwards was ridiculous. Besides having taken some serious blows from the fights, he should have survived the stab in his belly. It looked like the pipe wasn't penetrating deeper than 5cm (~2in) and obviously didn't hurt any important organs, since he was able to cry for another 5 minutes on the ground before suddenly fainting.**** ****4/10