The Night Comes For Us (Timo Tjahjanto, Indonesia, 2018)

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An ultra-violent, slick, non-stop action-fest distributed by Netflix, The Night Comes For Us is another of the streaming company’s 2018 triumphs, and another jewel in the Crown of Indonesia’s Brand of brutal, kinetic and brilliantly choreographed action films. Directed by Timo Tjahjanto (Headshot) and starring three alumni of The Raid duology, Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais and Julie Estelle is a gore-tastic treat for action fans.

In the seas of Southeast Asia, the Triads enforce their ruthless grip over the illegal businesses (drug-dealing, gun-running, human-trafficking and other such enterprises) by sending six delegates to make sure things run smoothly in all the countries where the Triads have a hand in. Known as the Six Seas, these enforcers go as far as murdering entire villages if the locals are caught stealing from the Triads supplies. Jakarta gangster, Ito (Joe Taslim) is one of the Six Seas and very effective on his job, until one day he snaps. Facing down a little girl called Reina (Asha Kenyeri Bermudez), the sole survivor of the most recent victim of his purges, Ito decides to spare her and gun down his own men. On the run after his betrayal, he returns to Jakarta and with the help of his former best friend Fatih (Abimana Aryasatya) and fellow associates (including Zack Lee as the memorable “White Boy” Bobby) tries to get new passports and money to start a new life far away from the Triad’s reach. However, fellow Six Seas Chien Wu (Sunny Pang) sends his own army after Ito and Reina, and personally commands Ito’s ambitious former friend and up-and-coming enforcer, Arian (Iko Uwais), to liquidate the traitor.

What follows is setpiece after setpiece of bone-crushing, throat slicing, disemboweling, head smashing action, as Ito and company fight back against Chien Wu’s seemingly endless supply of blade-wielding mooks. Besides these disposable tin soldiers, Chien Wu has under his employ a pair of psycho lesbians, Alma (Dian Sastrowardoyo, with a bob haircut, Mia Wallace outfit, Anime villain contempt for inferiors and a razor-wire lasso) and Helena (Hannah Al Rashid, Caucasian with Viking-style long hair shaved on one side and a fondness for Kukri knives), who are among the most terrifying badasses you have seen. Complicating matters is the appearance of the also incredibly badass Operator (Julie Estelle), a bike riding lady with a spy catsuit and a leather jacket who also makes mincemeat out of a couple people and whose motives are completely different from those of Chien Wu’s.

Picking a favorite action scene in this film is quite difficult, for there are a ton of them. Personally, I quite enjoyed the onslaught on Fatih’s apartment before the halfway mark, and the badass fighting between the ladies. Joe Taslim is a force of nature here, bleeding copious amounts of blood while also serving some unbelievable destruction in a very mean manner. He goes toe to toe with Uwais, who gets to play a (conflicted) antagonist. The neon-noir backdrop in both Macau nightclubs and Jakarta’s docks plants this film aesthetically within the range of the Raid movies and Johnnie To’s brilliant films like Fuk Sau and Drug War, so needless to say that the photography and set design are gorgeous. The use of props is also terrific: if you see it on screen, it can be used as a weapon, even the net for the pool table. Fair warning to those accustomed to traditional, modern-day Western action cinema: this is an extremely gory movie that I do not recommend watching while eating anything. Every creative way of slicing and hacking in every part of the body is demonstrated here and with thorough realism.

The Night Comes For Us is an over-the-top heroic bloodshed film in which plotting, motivation and the distinction between the good guys and bad guys are defined by a very thin line: the good guys want to save a little girl, the bad guys want to kill her. Other than that, both sides are involved in awful criminal activity and have no problem slaughtering people in brutal ways in the midst of combat. Throw your silly expectations of realism and fully embrace the pulverizing, blood-drenched, yet very stylish and graceful power of Indonesian action.

P.S. It was released on my birthday. How cool is that?

Nemesis (Albert Pyun, Denmark-USA, 1993)

 

When I first saw this film’s poster I thought to myself “I needed to watch this movie like yesterday.” It took me more time to get around to it, and by that time I had seen the trailer and became aware that it was directed by that B-movie genre maestro Albert Pyun. I confess that I have only seen Pyun’s “Captain America” when I was so much younger than today, but I had read enough about his reputatio: directing an unholy amount of films per year, a lot of story and technical ambition and a sensibility that skews towards cyborgs and sword and sorcery. So, my kind of guy. Reading bits and pieces about “Nemesis” (released in Japan in 92 and in the rest of the world in 93) I discovered that the film’s visual effects supervisor was Gene Warren Jr., who was also the visual effects for “Terminator 2”, a heavy influence on this movie. These reviewers said that the effects felt really short compared to T2, but I don’t see them as detrimental to the film as they do (I’ll get back to that in the end of this review). However, the convoluted storyline and confusing character motivations do a bit of damage, overpowering what I felt was a cracking shoot-em-up with some awesome stylish elements.

The film is set in Los Angeles, 2027. It is a cyberpunk hellscape, with enhanced humans, people who use their bodies to smuggle data and very human looking and behaving androids. Cyborgs also exist, including our film’s morally ambiguous protagonist, Alex Raine (Olivier Gruner) an LAPD agent/assassin who is really good at his job. He is introduced in the middle of a violent standoff with members of a terrorist group called The Red Army Hammerheads. He is more machine than man now, as pointed out by the leader of the cell of Hammerheads he mostly succeeds in killing, before she shoots him down. Repaired and reconstructed, Raine later leaves the service and tries his hand in the black market in Brazil, only to be captured and compelled into service for the LAPD (which has way too much power and jurisdiction here) once more by his old superior, commissioner Farnsworth (Tim Thomerson) who plants a time bomb in Raine’s heart to convince him. Raine has to track down the leadership of the Hammerheads and his former superior/lover, Jared, an android, who has smuggled some data about the security of a meeting between the United States and Japan, who are planning on merging into a single country. But once Alex is in Java, he uncovers more twists and turns.

The plot, like I said, is ridiculously complicated and the film shifts character motivations at the drop of a hat. What’s worse, named characters are introduced and killed or dropped in a flash (including the hero’s dog, which seemed to be more important at first). There are also some really odd choices, like having a white female character speak in pidgin Japanese with no discernible reason or textual justification. The script definitely needed some paring down, because following these people around is a bit frustrating. It is obvious that the film is bursting with some great ideas such as the nature of humanity, the effects and possibilities of trans-humanism, duty, etc. On the flip side, I greatly enjoyed the atmospheric, golden-hour look of the film and the image of badasses in suits and ties (and even a mini-dress!) and hi-tech sunglasses firing Desert Eagle pistols (and similar heavy and futuristic variants), shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers and so forth. This is a futuristic Heroic Bloodshed film and the choreography is great and it has some delightful over-the-top moments: two bad guys shoot through a wall by drawing silhouettes with their machine guns, something I’ve only seen in cartoons; Alex does the “shoot the floor” trick to get away from some baddies a whopping five or six times in a row (we watch him go down while he keeps firing through every floor). The bullets never run out. There’s every combination of weaponry, martial arts and kickassery imaginable. And the women are all jaw-droppingly gorgeous. The actresses include Marjorie Monaghan, Deborah Shelton, Jennifer Gatti, Merle Kennedy and Blair Valk, most of them regulars of 90’s Star Trek TV Shows. The supporting cast includes Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, Brion James (doing a bonkers German accent), Yuji Okumoto and brief appearances from Sven Ole-Thorsen, Thomas Jane and Jackie Earle Haley.

The visual effects are pretty good for a film of a lower budget than Hollywood (it was produced by Imperial Entertainment, but it had been on Pyun’s head since working for Cannon in the mid-80’s, although in different versions than this one) and the final confrontation with an exoskeleton is pretty well done. Actually, I find it even more commendable, considering the budget. There are a lot of splendid set pieces that involve an insane amount of explosions (everything explodes when fired at in this movie, kind of like in 90s videogames) and even an industrial chimney falls down and almost crushes our heroes. Pyun is also good at staging conversation scenes in a manner that you don’t even see nowadays, with some really nice tracking shots throughout. There’s also body horror galore (cybernetic eyes and pulled out to be inspected) and lots of gore: cyborgs and androids, when they get shot, turn into awful messes, and we see disembodied torsos and faces torn apart, half muscle, half metal, and really bloody. The film takes a lot of elements from a wide variety of movies like “Robocop”, T2, “Blade Runner” and “Escape From New York”, and it mostly works, although I think Pyun got confused because the terms cyborgs and androids are used interchangeably (that is to say, androids, which are robots with human skin and blood, are called cyborgs, which gets confusing, especially because they are also capable of sexual activity). Another fascinating aspect of the film: male characters have traditionally female names (Michelle, Angie, Marion) and female characters have traditional male names (Jared, Max, Julian).

All and all, a film that, despite some frustrating aspects, is a lot of fun to watch, and at its thrilling speed you don’t even feel the time go by. For fans of cyberpunk, heroic bloodshed, corporate/political warfare, retro-futuristic fashion and the human form. Recently released on Blu-Ray by MVD Visual, which includes 3 different cuts. Also, the poster really is a gorgeous piece of work that I want on my wall.