Gareth Evans met Iko Uwais when he was hired to make a documentary film on Silat produced by Christine Hakim production company. Impressed by the young man's screen presence, Evans casts him as the leading role for his first action movie.
During the first part of the movie which tells Yuda's daily life with his mother and brother, half of the dialogs are in Minang language (one of more than 500 local dialects and languages in Indonesia), and have to be subtitled into Indonesian in the Indonesian released.