HOLLYWOOD, CALIFORNIA - MAY 28: Joe Taslim attends "The Furious" Special Screening at Hollywood Post 43 - American Legion on May 28, 2026 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images for Lionsgate)

Getty Images for Lionsgate

Joe Taslim may be the coolest guy that Western audiences aren’t aware of, but they’ve seen his work. He’s best known as a badass martial artist, often seen in movies and on television shows, taking names and kicking butt since his rise to stardom in 2011’s The Raid.

The 44-year-old actor has been acting in both his home country of Indonesia and Hollywood, on some of the biggest franchises – Fast & Furious 6, Star Trek Beyond, Mortal Kombat, and, most recently, the sequel Mortal Kombat II. He also had a leading role in the historical action-drama TV series Warrior. He’s also a former national judo champion (with many medals from the Southeast Asian Games), musician (he plays multiple instruments, including piano and guitar), linguist (he speaks Indonesian, English, Mandarin, and learned Korean for the 2020 Korean drama, The Swordsman), DJ, husband, and father to three kids.

Yet, when you call him out on why he’s so cool, he is modest, saying he’s just a guy living a simple life. He admits he doesn’t really socialize much and sticks to a routine when he’s back home with his family. When he’s on location to shoot, he uses his downtime to learn something new. During the filming of Star Trek Beyond, he learned to play the piano after buying a keyboard and watching YouTube tutorials.​

“I always need to fill my brain with something,” Taslim says over Zoom from The Furious press junket in Los Angeles. “Learning something new always excites me so much. The funny thing about learning is that once you start with something simple, you want more.”

For his latest film, the Hong Kong action film The Furious, directed by Kenji Tanigaki, Taslim was one of the leads, and didn’t exactly have time to learn a new hobby. He was focused on the task at hand, especially since it’s been his dream.

“I’m very lucky,” he says, excitedly. “I’ve been following Kenji Tanigaki for years. It’s like manifestation, but in my mind, I was always channeling that I wanted to work with this guy. My mind was working nonstop, channeling, someday I want to be in a Hong Kong movie.”

As a fan of Hong Kong films, he always dreamed of being in a Hong Kong action drama, and when he got the call from Academy Award-nominated producer Bill Kong to join The Furious. Tanigaki flew over to Jakarta to Taslim’s home to talk about the project, but Taslim had already made up his mind before the Japanese director planned on coming.

“I’ve been dreaming of this opportunity for who knows how long,” Taslim recalls. “You don’t have to fly here, just text me! I would say yes!”

In the new film, journalist Navin (Taslim) has been investigating the disappearance of his fellow journalist wife, who has been investigating the increase in missing children in Southeast Asia. He meets Wei (Xie Miao), whose daughter is kidnapped, and together, they fight a criminal empire to save the trafficked children. When I say ‘fight,’ it’s extreme and brutal carnage with the most intense and inventive martial arts choreography.

Aside from martial arts, Taslim really connected with the story after watching many documentaries about child trafficking in Southeast Asia. It hit him hard to know that these things happen in real life, especially as a father. He recalls reading that some of these kids believe this is their normal, like one of the child characters in the story, which broke him during filming. He recalls watching a documentary about a group of children being saved, but none of them understood they were being saved, and they asked to go back.

“These kids don’t know what’s going on,” he says, as his voice begins to crack at moments. “This is their childhood, and for me, that’s the most heartbreaking part. What kind of world are we living in right now? They’re just children.”

The rage and anger he felt towards those traffickers helped him portray Navin, putting all his intensity into fighting to save those kids. He relays, “Saving all those kids was my motivation. What if those were not just my kids, but just all kids in general? I would save them. I put it in my imagination, what if that happened to my kid? I would cross the ocean. I would slice the mountain and do anything I can to save them.”

He hopes the story offers entertainment for audiences to watch the fight sequences, while also raising awareness among people who don’t know these things are happening. He understands it’s not an easy subject to digest.

“I understand – it’s systematic,” he says. “It’s happening in a country that people cannot really go to save them, but we [should be aware of it, if we can do something.]”

His character goes on a journey of grief and acceptance – all while kicking serious butt against the story's villains. He really appreciates how Navin was written and finds his story very fulfilling, including the character’s conclusion.

“It’s such a beautiful journey,” Taslim notes. “In the beginning,m he’s a journalist thinking he’s in control, trying to find his wife. He was just going to go for it. But, he’s a bit naive, believing that [the main villain] was just a product of his bad environment, letting him go – only for him to be a big threat to them in the end. The final fight could have been a lot easier for us [if he had killed him beforehand], but he chose to save him, and the end turned out to be beautiful somehow. After he finds out his purpose and mission are gone, if he’s going down, he’s taking them with him. That’s my goal.”

It was also satisfying for Taslim to fight his longtime friend and co-star, Indonesian actor Yayan Ruhian, whom Taslim endearingly calls “Kakak” (meaning “big brother” in Indonesian). This would be their fifth time working together, the first being 16 years ago on The Raid. Ruhian and Taslim have strong synergy, understanding each other’s pace, rhythm, and creative vision.

“We help each other a lot,” Taslim reflects. “When two people fight each other in action scenes and see the illusion that we’re trying to create, we’re trying to kill each other. But, in the execution of that, we actually protect each other a lot because there are so many movements that I know if I do this, he’s going to get hurt. I have to help him a bit and give him a half-second here and there. When I have a problem with some movement, he understands me well. We understand each other on a very deep level, so it’s a great fight. The process is hard physically, but mentally, we had a lot of fun.”

Taslim is looking forward to his next project – the Indonesian remake of the 2010 Korean hit action thriller, The Man From Nowhere. Opus Pictures’ Lee Tae-hun owns the intellectual property rights to the original film, offering Taslim the rights to do an Indonesian remake if he wanted to. Taslim remembers their conversation from 2018, and initially turned it down because the original was just so good. He thought about it earlier this year when his producer friend asked what kind of projects did Taslim want to do, and he immediately thought about The Man From Nowhere.

“We got the rights for an Indonesian remake, and I told them I only wanted to do it with the best people,” he says, assuringly. “I want Kenji to direct. The story of the script is really beautiful, so we don’t really have to change that much. I know we can elevate the action part, since that was 16 years ago. This movie and the action back then were so different from what we have now. The action genre is very different, and a lot of things happened after The Raid, The Raid 2, and The Furious. So I believe it’s time for us to try to challenge ourselves in the action part in this one.”

He definitely says to expect more blood and action, and of course, Ruhian. He says, “It’s a great IP, and a lot of people love the original. We just want to give them the Kenji Tanigaki and Joe Taslim version – which, for sure, involves a lot of blood.”

The Furious premieres in theaters everywhere on June 12.