Film Review: Wira

Wira is a Malaysian action film from director, Adrian Teh, that had a theatrical run in Malaysia late last year, but was finally made available worldwide a few weeks back when it was acquired by Netflix. It nearly slipped my radar given how little promo Netflix tends to give some of the films they acquire, and on the surface, it might seem like a fairly generic and disposable martial arts action movie. The film is a bit slow in the start, but it does open with an absolutely brutal MMA style match between two women, and if that doesn’t grab your attention, you’re definitely missing out.

The basic idea of the film is admittedly pretty standard. It’s basically a riff on something like Walking Tall (more the 2004 film than the 1973 one). We have Hassan (Hairul Azreen), a man who has returned home after a stint in the military. He realizes things haven’t changed much since he left, and in certain respects, it’s gotten much worse as a local gangster, Raja (Dain Said) has infested the town with crime and corruption, which has led Hassan’s family to be indebted to him. Hassan hopes to help settle the debt through the MMA matches run by Raja, but if only it were that simple.

If you want to know how much the movie means business, it’s worth knowing that the fight choreographer is Yayan Ruhian, and if you don’t recognize the name, he’s Mad Dog from the first Raid film, and you’ve seen him in The Raid 2, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and probably most recently in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum. He also shows up in the film as Ifrit, Raja’s bodyguard, and you bet there’s an awesome showdown between him and Hassan and his sister, Zain (Fify Azmi), who was one of the fighters in the opening fight, going up against Raja’s daughter.

The fight scenes in this are incredibly well done, and there’s a solid variety. There’s the opening one-on-one MMA match, a purely defensive sequence between Hassan and a bunch of Raja’s men that is filmed entirely in one tracking shot, a fight scene involving Hassan, Zain, and a bunch of dudes armed with knives inside a moving bus, and that is all just in the first hour of the film. It only gets better, more intense, as well as more emotionally involving as it goes along, and it makes for one hell of a ride.

The performances from the cast are pretty strong, though it’s no necessarily the most demanding roles ever. Hairul Azreen is a very compelling lead with a great screen presence, and frankly, I don’t see why he can’t rise to the level of stardom that someone like Iko Uwais has gotten to. He also has a great dynamic with Fify Azmi, who is really less of a supporting player and more of a co-lead. She handles herself well with the action, and it was surprising to learn that this was not only her first role, but she was a model prior to this. Dain Said is great at making you really hate him as the villain; having him speak mostly English certainly makes for an interesting touch in that regard.

I’m not gonna say that Wira features things that I haven’t seen before because that definitely isn’t the case. The action isn’t necessarily inventive, the story is very predictable, and the characters are very straightforward archetypes. However, it still really works. I was engaged with the characters, and I found myself really invested in Hassan and Zain’s journey to seek justice. If you enjoy martial arts movies, but don’t quite have the stomach for the intense gore of something like The Night Comes For Us, then Wira will most definitely offer some satisfying action that is brutal, but not gruesome. I had a great time with it, and if you’re an action junkie then Adrian Teh and Hairul Azreen are names that need to be on your radar, as well as the Malaysian action scene in general.