Iko Uwais, the martial artist, actor, and fight choreographer best known for impressively murdering oceans of goons in The Raid movies and The Night Comes For Us, is extremely good at kicking ass. He’s so good, in fact, that Netflix is comfortable putting out a show called Wu Assassins in a couple weeks that blends mob drama and shape-shifting wizardry seemingly because, as stupid as the premise sounds, it will feature Uwais knocking heads together in a starring role.
A new trailer manages to sum up at least part of what Wu Assassins looks to be about. In it, we hear that a history-spanning feud between ancient warriors has culminated in a San Francisco chef named Kai Jin (Uwais) being selected as the 21st century’s “Chosen One” and forced to embrace his destiny as a magical fighter who must take down evil Triads.
More importantly, there’s some fighting set to a Snoop Dogg track—an obvious oversight when “Bring Da Ruckus” was right there, waiting to be used as hype-up music for a show with Wu in its very name—and appearances from supporting actors like Tzi Ma, Katheryn Winnick, and Mark Dacascos. There’s also a lot of very cheesy looking digital effects showing Uwais’ Kai Jin face-shifting like a hastily-assembled deepfake upload, as well as lines of dialogue like, “You can’t just kill the head of the Triad. He’s your father!” At one point, Uwais is surrounded by crappy-looking orange CGI energy waves and then punches a boulder so hard it cracks, in case you need a fuller picture of what Wu Assassins is going for.
Wu Assassins will be available on Netflix on August 8th.