Joe Taslim

From the Tatami to the Big Screen

Joe Taslim spent a full decade taking hits before anyone paid him for it. As a member of Indonesia's national judo team from 1997 to 2009, he won a silver medal at the Southeast Asian Games in 2007. But knee injuries forced him to retire from professional competition before he turned thirty.

That was when film finally found him.

In 2011, director Gareth Evans was looking for fresh faces for an extreme action project called The Raid. Taslim landed the role of Sergeant Jaka because he could move through chaos without losing his technical composure. The film cost just over one million dollars and ended up reshaping the rules of martial arts cinema in the West.

The world took notice of that supporting actor who kept up with the impossible choreography of Iko Uwais.

Because Taslim is not just a body that hits. His training in wushu and taekwondo gives him a fluidity that Hollywood stunt coordinators spotted immediately. So just two years after his international debut, he jumped into the major American film industry.

The Leap to the Big Leagues

In 2013, he played Jah in Fast & Furious 6 under the direction of Justin Lin. It was a brief but physically demanding role in which he faced two of the leads in a London subway station. That shoot taught him how a major studio machine worked and how the pace differed from productions in Jakarta.

But the actor did not want to be typecast as the silent henchman who only throws kicks.

In 2016, he appeared in Star Trek Beyond hidden beneath layers of prosthetic makeup to play Manas. It was a real test of his patience. He spent hours in the makeup chair before each workday and had to convey emotion through a latex mask that barely let him move his face.

The gamble paid off.

Taslim returned to Indonesia in 2018 to star in The Night Comes For Us by Timo Tjahjanto. It is a film where violence borders on the unbearable. In this production, his character Ito required a much heavier dramatic weight than his previous work, because he had to embody remorse and redemption amid constant carnage.

The Mask and the Wire

In 2019, he joined the cast of the series Warrior, based on the writings of Bruce Lee. His character Li Yong allowed him to explore the elegance of traditional kung fu in a historical drama setting with racial tensions in 19th-century San Francisco. The series was shot in Cape Town and demanded a level of physical preparation that Taslim maintained for three seasons.

Then came the chance to put on the uniform of one of the most iconic villains in video games.

In 2021, he was cast as Bi-Han, known as Sub-Zero, in the new version of Mortal Kombat. It was the first time an Indonesian actor led the villains in a franchise of that scale. Taslim signed a contract that included several potential sequels depending on the first installment's box office performance.

For the fight scenes in Mortal Kombat, the Sub-Zero suit weighed more than 10 kilos and severely restricted his joint mobility. The actor had to adapt his judo movements so he wouldn't break the armor pieces during real contact shots. The production allocated 55 million dollars to the film's total budget.