YMMV / Merantau

• Anvilicious: Life in the country is more peaceful and wholesome than in the city.
• Narm:
  • Eric's overtly dramatic sacrifice, in which he receives about ten thousand bullets after pushing Yuda aside while ostensibly not trying to save himself too. It might be intentional, in case Eric was trying to make the guards empty their magazines on him in order to give Yuda a chance, but it doesn't make it any less absurd.
  • Any time Ratger is trying to ham it up, especially since his actor Mads Koudal was either acting poorly or was on a diet of Ham and Cheese.
• Narm Charm: Mads Koudal's performance as Ratger is pretty bizarre, but it certainly makes him more memorable than the average martial arts movie villain.
• Older Than They Think:
  • A somewhat naive martial artist comes to unknown territory and gets involved with protecting a circumstance-forced red light worker and her child sibling from the powerful prostitution lord she works for. She is taken out of the party when they get into the bad guys's place to get back something, and he is forced to fight nonstop through miniboss pimps, loads of gangsters and eventually an epic two-on-one against a pair of psychos, after which the hero is wounded in his last effort. Are we talking about Merantau or Kiss of the Dragon?
  • A young martial artist villager comes to the big city in some kind of spiritual mission and gets his money stolen by a ruffian, but later befriends him and his female companion after recovering it and saving them from thugs. She is kidnapped and the hero has to fight through more thugs and a psycho duo composed by a mafioso and his second. At the end, one of the main characters dies and the girl is sent to a better life. Merantau or Ong-Bak?
• Tear Jerker: Despite its spiritual premise, Merantau is much darker than the average kung fu flick, and it shows. Yuda's death at the end is a slap to the face.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: A common impression, given that the film has all the conflicting characters killed at the end and this destroys the chance of a sequel.