The title gives just a hint of the full extent of cranial damage crammed into this dizzyingly relentless action movie. Heads are shot, punched, kicked, clobbered with typewriters, dented with retractable truncheons and submitted to some particularly grisly eye-socket trauma. Indonesian genre specialists the Mo Brothers (Timo Tjahjanto, Kimo Stamboel) tackle the martial arts genre, and the result is the most insanely violent film of the year.
The whiplash pencak silat skills of Iko Uwais (star of The Raid and both star and fight choreographer of this film) and his Raid co-star Julie Estelle are showcased, alongside those of a host of expendable other fighters. Notable are Very Tri Yulisman, playing a killer hipster with ironic spectacles and a Hoxton haircut, and Sunny Pang, radiating evil as the Father from Hell, a powerful crime boss with a grudge against Ishmael (Uwais).
Washed up on a beach and suffering the convenient Bourne-style amnesia that wipes out identity but still leaves fighting prowess, Ishmael is nursed back to health by doctor/love interest/kidnap victim Ailin (Chelsea Islan). The romantic subplot is a bit of a tokenistic distraction, but the fight choreography is thrilling. The directors shoot handheld with a camera that takes almost as much punishment as the cast: it gets chucked across rooms and, at one point, through the back window of a bus along with Ishmael.
