Watched Timo Tjahjanto's The Night Comes for Us and...holy crap, you guys. This combined with the Raid series proves that Indonesia appears to be the up-and-coming Mecca for gritty, gruesome, and inventive action movies. Boiler-plate plot: a hitman leaves the Triad after refusing to kill a little girl, all the other Triad hitmen try to hunt him down. But it's the execution what makes it. Timo Tjahjanto isn't so much a director as a butcher, meticulously devising the most horrific ways the human body can be smashed, bashed, sliced, diced, chopped, cubed, torn, and thrashed. And sometimes all while the people on fire are on fire! Some of the cinematography reminds me of the 80s neon chic of Michael Mann or early John Woo, but never so much that it becomes overbearing. Everything here serves first and foremost to better frame the pulse-pounding violence. This is my favorite kind of action movie: one where the characters get battle damage. By the end, all the characters are hobbling around, barely able to keep their limbs from falling off or their organs from falling out. It raises the stakes more than if they were invincible.
Rating: 8/10
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