How do the movies of Iko Uwais rank, from worst to best? In the last decade or so, Indonesia has risen to become one of the epicenters of The Raid: Redemption and its 2014 follow-up The Raid 2. Since then, Uwais hasn't slowed down in wowing audiences with his screen presence and martial arts ability.
In more recent years, Uwais has made the leap to Hollywood productions and granted, he's been lamentably wasted in a couple of them. For all the strengths of Keanu Reeves' directorial debut Wu Assassins.
Nonetheless, Uwais has yet to be the leading man in a less-than-terrific martial arts flick, and even in ing roles, he consistently elevates the movie's he's in. Uwais is also equally electrifying in villain roles, a fact not lost on the makers of The Expendables 4, and the kinds of action scenes he's capable of delivering are what martial arts fans dream of. Here is a rundown of Iko Uwais' movies, from worst to best.
10. Mile 22
Arriving late in the summer of 2018, Donnie Yen's early days in Hollywood. Mile 22 star Mark Wahlberg as CIA agent James Silva, whose team is tasked who transporting Uwais' Li Noor 22 miles to an airport to allow him to on information on secret activities by his government. Director Peter Berg keeps the action moving swiftly, but Uwais' fight scenes are filmed with the same choppiness and shaky cam of the rest of the movie - a far cry from the outstanding action scenes he's done elsewhere, and, frankly, that Berg has too (i.e. The Rock versus Ernie Reyes Jr. in The Rundown).
That's also sadly more than can be said for the horrendously underutilized Ronda Rousey as Silva's partner Sam. Mile 22 was the intended first part of a series, though there doesn't seem to be any forward momentum on that front. Despite lots of potential, some decent if choppy fight scenes, and a splendid twist in its closing moments, Mile 22 is the weakest Iko Uwais movie, with the energy he brings to the film only showing how much stronger it could have been.
9. Stuber
A rather minor footnote in the career of Iko Uwais, Stuber is a serviceable buddy cop revenge romp. Dave Bautista portrays LAPD cop Vic Manning, who pursues a vendetta against his partner's killer, crime boss Oka Tedjo, played by Uwais. The catch is that Vic has recently undergone laser eye surgery, leaving him temporarily visually impaired and forcing him to pull Kumail Nanjiani's Stu Prasad into the mix as his Uber, or rather "Stuber," as Stu has nicknamed himself on the Uber beat.
Bautista ventured into more dramatic territory with his ittedly minor role in Denis Villeneuve's Dune. However, his knack for physical comedy shouldn't be overlooked either, as he shows himself to be surprisingly adept at the Mr. Magoo-inspired blind hijinks that the script calls upon him to perform. As a comedy of the pairing of two opposites, Stuber gets the job done in Bautista's buddy-movie banter with Kumail. Uwais's appearance is relatively minor, which could theoretically have been due to scheduling overlaps, and the movie gets some decent mileage out of his martial arts abilities without being anything too spectacular. Stuber's strongest asset is the buddy comedy banter between Bautista and Nanjiani, but fans of Uwais might still want to give it a look for his action scenes.
8. Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins
Uwais took on his first mentor role in Uwais as a martial arts movie legend. The one-on-one with Snake Eyes and Hard Master is arguably the best training scene in the movie, Snake Eyes tasked with snatching a rice bowl full of water from Hard Master without spilling any water, and being reminded that humility is just as important in martial arts as combat precision.
Unfortunately, Snake Eyes also is wounded by the use shaky cam and fast editing. The good news is that it doesn’t reach teases for the Joes themselves. While its shaky cam unfortunately takes it off-course from hitting a perfect bull’s eye, the performances of Golding and Koji make it still worth checking out, along with seeing Iko Uwais in a wise mentor role for the first time.
7. Merantau
The film debut of Iko Uwais, Merantau is also notable for being the big break Welsh-born filmmaker Gareth Evans, and it foretold great things to come for both of them. Uwais portrays Yuda, a young villager and Silat practitioner sent to Jakarta on a pilgrimage known as "merantau," and soon finds himself trying to rescue Sisca Jessica's Astri and her young brother Adit, played by Yusuf Aulia, from human traffickers. For being a first timer in a movie, Uwais carries Merantau impressively as a genuine, Jackie Chan-like underdog in over his head and a warrior as soon as the situation calls upon him to be. The same is also true for Evans, whose talent as an action filmmaker was beyond undeniable long before he and Uwais took the world by storm with The Raid films.
Yayan Ruhian also appears in the more innocent (for him) role of Erik, he and Uwais facing off in an elevator fight that in the world of martial arts films, and needless to say, it only got better for both of them from there.
6. Beyond Skyline
Writer-director Liam O'Donnell rewrote the rule book on alien invasion movies with its almost found footage-esque story, giving a much earlier glimpse into the invaders transplanting human brains into the bodies of mechanized alien warriors, codenamed "pilots". The film also cleverly holds off on the entry of Uwais and his co-star from The Raid movies Yayan Ruhian until midway through.
The final showdown of human versus aliens in an ancient temple is the kind of thing action and sci-fi fans didn't know they needed, visually encapsulating O'Donnell's melding of genres literally worlds apart into one seriously fun popcorn flick. The series continued in 2020 with Skyline sci-fi movie series into the best ongoing alien-movie franchise the world currently has.
5. Triple Threat
Directed by stunt veteran Jesse Johnson, Triple Threat takes a page out of the playbook of Jason Statham's adversary in The Expendables 2). He soon comes to learn that their former team Payu and Long Fei, played by Jaa and Chen, are also out to bring them down in their efforts to take out Celina Jade's wealthy anti-crime benefactor Xiao Xian, leading the three to forces.
Originating from a concept developed by Tiger Chen, Triple Threat is an incredibly economical action movie, only intermittently pausing to catch its breath in the full knowledge of what its audience is there to see. Within the titular trio of heroes, Uwais' Jaka is the clear brains of the operation, manipulating his enemies like pawns on a chessboard, only the prodding of suspicious Devereaux, played by Adkins' Undisputed 2 co-star Michael Jai White, threatening to expose his intentions. The movie also rectifies the aforementioned blemish of Man of Tai Chi, letting Uwais and Chen go toe-to-toe in a Muay Thai ring. The monumental final smackdown in an abandoned building would've been a great curtain closer in any scenario, but the build-up it's given from the movie's accelerated pace only makes it that much more of a martial arts-driven rush. Triple Threat 2? Make it happen!
4. The Night Comes For Us
Just getting a movie off into the take-off phase can sometimes be a tumultuous battle, and Timo Tjahjanto's Sub-Zero actor Joe Taslim, a conflicted enforcer for the Six Seas gang. Ito finds himself protecting a young girl named Reina, played by Asha Kenyeri Bermudez, and pursued by his old ally Arian, played by Uwais, who hopes to rise to the top of the gang by capturing his one-time friend. Uwais is clearly having fun in his first full-fledged opportunity to show what he can do as a villain, while Taslim's Ito is appropriately sympathetic even though he's clearly got plenty of blood on his hands.
Coming from horror films, Tjahjanto didn't exercise the slightest restraint in The Night Comes For Us, which is enough of a bloodbath to make The Raid movies look like a spin-off focused The Operator, the film's shadowy female assassin played by Julie Estelle, could be the path forward for The Night Comes For Us to continue its story. As the real breakout character of the film, and after the movie's ambiguous final moments, it's hard not to be on board to follow The Operator in a solo The Night Comes For Us spin-off, something that Tjahjanto already has mapped out.
3. Headshot
Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel, collectively known as The Mo Brothers, directed Uwais in perhaps his most emotional film to date, along with one of his most unrelentingly harsh ones, Headshot. Uwais plays a young man who awakens in a hospital stricken with amnesia, going by the name "Ishmael" due to his doctor, Chelsea Islan's Dr. Ailin, flipping through the pages of Moby Dick. It soon becomes clear he was once a member of a criminal gang led by Sunny Pang's Lee. Like Jason Bourne's story in The Bourne Identity with the DNA of a horror movie, Headshot is brutal in physical and emotional , its fight scenes just getting more and more intense as the movie progresses while Ishmael grapples with the realization that Lee and his cohorts Rika and Besi, played by Julie Estelle and Very Tri Yulisman, literally see him as family.
The idea of an amnesiac killing machine isn't exactly a groundbreaking premise, but the Mo Brothers make Headshot into a true tearjerker in Ishmael's efforts to leave his old life of violence behind even as the vicious Lee tries to pull him back into it, with the entire theme captured marvelously in a single shot near the end of the movie. With the possible exception of Merantau, Headshot will make you cry more than any other Iko Uwais movie just as much as its thoroughly harsh martial arts fights absolutely astonish.
2. The Raid: Redemption
After breaking out with Merantau, Uwais reteamed with director Gareth Evans for 2012's The Raid: Redemption, and it's far from an overstatement to call it one of the best action movies ever made. Uwais portrays Rama, a young Jakarata cop whose unit invades a tenement building that's an insane asylum of the most vicious killers and criminals in the whole city. It isn't long before their cover is blown, leaving the surviving of the team to fight for their lives while Rama tries to pull his estranged brother Andi, played by Donny Alamsyah, out from the life of crime he has left their family for. The Raid has often been likened to a survival horror movie, its action scenes chilling, blood-soaking battles of Rama and his allies just trying to not get slaughtered by psychopaths emerging from their apartments like ravenous zombies on the attack.
Uwais channels the same everyman warrior that he was in Merantau, though Yayan Ruhian all but steals the show as the ruthless Mad Dog, a name well-earned in his scorching smackdown with Rama and Andi. The Raid became the new yardstick by which martial arts films are measured, and it's still used as a template for imbuing action scenes with plenty of fight-or-flight grit. Even the superhero genre would begin looking to The Raid, as seen in fight scenes in Warrior, which was originally conceived by Bruce Lee, but Evans and Uwais wasted no time in showing there was still more fuel in the franchise's tank.
1. The Raid 2
2014's The Raid 2 actually began life as a completely different project called Berandal that Gareth Evans was unable to secure financing for, leading him to instead make The Raid with Iko Uwais. Evans later hit upon the idea of reworking the Berandal script to make it a sequel to The Raid, and thus was born The Raid 2. Picking up after the ending of its predecessor, The Raid 2 follows Rama as he goes undercover in a prison to befriend Arifin Putra's Uco, the son of one of Jakarta's big crime bosses, in an effort bring down the crime families running the city.
Where The Raid was a survival horror movie, The Raid 2 is a crime film of warring criminal organizations Mad Max: Fury Road had to offer the following year.
The villains are like the pack that Mad Dog might've run with, including Very Tri Yulisman and Julie Estelle as Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl, along with Yayan Ruhian returning in the new role of the tiny but fearsome gang enforcer Prakoso. The movie's knife fight finale is also rivaled only by John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum. The Raid 2 is built on the original's bar-raising impact to deliver both an intricate crime drama and another martial arts classic, and is easily the best Iko Uwais movie to date.
