Do we like Iko Uwais?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record and no harmful words found, but one 2022 assault allegation (settled) and a thin public record on bigger issues.
Iko Uwais is the Indonesian martial arts star who made his name in Merantau, The Raid and Headshot, then went to Hollywood for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Mile 22 and Stuber. In 2014 he founded Uwais Team, a fight choreography crew that has become one of Indonesia's go-to action outfits. Netflix's Wu Assassins started with him as choreographer, and he ended up the lead and an executive producer.
The one real stoush on his record is from June 2022. A man Uwais had hired to do the interior design on a house reported to police that Uwais and a colleague punched him until he bled, after an invoice went unanswered. That was an allegation, not a finding, and Uwais told reporters he was the one attacked first and was protecting a family member. He counter-reported for defamation.
It ended without a court ruling. In July 2022 Jakarta police said mediation had both sides agree to withdraw their reports, so the case went no further. No apology or payout was reported, so you can read it as a settled scrap or an unresolved one, but it is one incident, not a pattern.
On the harm test, there's honestly not much to find. We found no comments from him on LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants, vaccines or the climate, and no record of him campaigning or donating for any cause. His recent projects are Indonesian action films made with his own company, and nothing there raises a flag about the company he keeps. That's a thin record rather than a glowing one.
Lately he's been busy behind the camera. He made his directorial debut with Timur, a jungle hostage-rescue action film that he also stars in, and launched Uwais Pictures to produce more. Blood Ties, a thriller about a former martial arts athlete taking on loan sharks, came out of that banner in April 2026, with his stunt team on the fights. His line at the time was “Let's move Asian action cinema forward together.”
The good stuff is mostly about the craft. He helped put pencak silat on the world screen and now gives other Indonesian action talent a pipeline through his company. We found no confirmed charity work, and plenty of auto-generated profile sites claim some, so we're leaving those out.