Head­shot

This is a film whose mak­ers chan­nel all of their cre­ative ener­gies into devis­ing visu­al vari­a­tions of men punch­ing oth­er men (and occa­sion­al­ly women) about the body and face. Aside from the occa­sion­al dash of excite­ment, it seems that, when all is said and done, a punch is a punch is a punch. And there’s no amount of phys­i­cal agili­ty, wild cam­era twitch­ing or slow-mo blood­let­ting that can pre­vent a pro­longed fist fight from becom­ing very bor­ing, very quickly.

Mas­ter killer Iko Uwais stars as dam­aged dullard Ish­mael, a con­fused young man who wash­es up on a beach with a mys­te­ri­ous surgery scar snaking across his cra­ni­um. He then slips into a pair of pow­er blue Vans and loose-fit­ting camo green sin­glet, and before he’s had a chance to gath­er his mar­bles, a pro­ces­sion of gurn­ing, tat­too-cov­ered minions/​punching bags are hav­ing at him with guns, knives and tele­scop­ic batons.

With its com­put­er game-like nar­ra­tive dynam­ic, Head­shot sees Ish­mael stag­ger from one boss lev­el to the next, even­tu­al­ly arriv­ing at a stock bunker loca­tion, sliced-up and whim­per­ing, where he takes on the real­ly nasty bas­tard at the end of the trail. Writer/​directors Kimo Stam­boel and Timo Tjah­jan­to string togeth­er set pieces with max­i­mum effi­cien­cy and min­i­mum dra­ma, tee­ing up a stock love inter­est ear­ly on to sup­ply the hero with his death-defy­ing drive.

Uwais is best known as star of Gareth Evans’ The Raid films, in which his aston­ish­ing mar­tial arts prowess was first revealed to the world. And attempts have cer­tain­ly been made to par­lay his par­tic­u­lar set of skills into visu­al­ly arrest­ing sequences. But fol­low­ing a nifty escape from a burn­ing bus, the film swift­ly set­tles into tedious mano-y-mano match-ups where the same spe­cial moves are exe­cut­ed ad infini­tum and to seem­ing­ly dimin­ish­ing and anony­mous effect. Though for con­se­quence-free screen vio­lence junkies, this will cer­tain­ly have its charms.