Plot: Skilled in the art of killing, a young assassin defies her mentor to save a boy from a ruthless crime syndicate — and she’ll destroy anyone in her path.
Review: Indonesia has long had a strong film industry that has gotten more and more global exposure thanks to streaming and the success of Gareth Evans’ 2011 film The Raid. In the years since, we have seen many impressive action and horror films from Southeast Asia, many of them by director Timo Tjahjanto. Whether as a solo writer-director or part of the duo known as The Mo Brothers, Tjahjanto is known for his complex action choreography and brutally violent gore. Today sees the release of the director’s latest movie, the epic The Shadow Strays. Clocking in at two-and-a-half hours, The Shadow Strays is big in every way. From the numerous action set-pieces across Asia, the film is an impressive feast for genre fans as Tjahjanto raises the bar on how creative he can kill thugs and mercenaries. With a lot of time to fill, The Shadow Strays works more than it doesn’t but still suffers from an imbalance in the non-action sequences.
Combining the excess of John Woo’s heyday with buckets of blood usually reserved for horror films, The Shadow Strays looks and feels like a big-budget studio action movie, albeit one with very over-the-top histrionic exposition. Opening with a sequence set in Japan, we are introduced to the concept of “Shadows,” assassins trained for anonymity. During a brutal massacre of a Yakuza clan, a Shadow trainee code-named 13 (Aurora Ribero) is chastised by her teacher, Umbra (Hana Malasan), after she loses focus when a civilian is caught in her crossfire. Relegated to the bench where she must continue taking emotion-regulating medication, 13 returns home to Jakarta and stumbles across a young boy named Monji (Sebastian Sero), whose mother is killed by a gang, leaving him an orphan. Feeling parallels to her own past, 13 takes Monji under her wing. When he is kidnapped by the criminals who killed his mother, 13 seeks to rescue him and takes down every person in her path.
A lot is going on in The Shadow Strays, much of which does not make much sense. There is an attempt by Tjahjanto to make the Shadows a blend of super-soldiers and righteous warriors, but we spend so little time seeing them on mission that it feels unnecessary. The bulk of the story centers on 13 using her training to exact merciless vengeance upon the criminals who kidnap Monji, and that is more than enough for this movie to make sense. Equally, the villains spend a lot of time monologuing about their dastardly plans, which include rape, murder, and political ambition. The crooked cops and gangsters are working together to rule Jakarta, but 13 and Monji are in their way. There is a subplot halfway through The Shadow Strays that tries to shift the focus and give 13 a detour, but it mostly adds another substantial action sequence to the already overlong running time. Because The Shadow Strays is deliberately melodramatic, the exposition scenes border on comical, which some viewers may find detracts from the pacing of the film, delaying us from getting to more bone-crushing violence.
While some elements of The Shadow Strays feel a bit outdated, namely the fact that a female assassin shocks some of the male characters, most of it is grisly, over-the-top fun. From the first scene, the CGI blood pours in abundance, with every weapon you can think of being used, from guns, knives, swords, and household objects. When weapons don’t do it, teeth and fingers rip at flesh as the bodies hit the floor. Aurora Ribero and Hana Malasan are excellent as they blend the mentor/mentee relationship with an understated familial bond that never slides into anything formulaic. The majority of the weakness in this movie falls to the villains. Every bad guy in this movie is a stereotype from a Jean Claude Van Damme or Steven Seagal movie. Yes, it is fun to watch them die, but when they try to wax philosophical, it just drags down the pacing of the entire film.
Timo Tjahjanto has proven his style relies on going up to the line and sometimes crossing it spectacularly. As a director, he has given us some truly scary moments, notably in The ABCs of Death and both V/H/S/2 and V/H/S/94, but his work on May The Devil Take You and as part of The Mo Brothers with Headshot, Tjahjanto feels both like an inspiration for the trend of John Wick-inspired films. That is likely why Tjahjanto recently wrapped production Nobody 2 with Bob Odenkirk, which will hopefully boast some of this signature violence. Tjahjanto is a filmmaker who feels destined for Hollywood greatness if he had come in twenty years ago when studios were more willing to grant budget dollars to R-rated fare. This is a solid production from a logistical and creative standpoint, even if the script suffers from cliche dialogue and overwrought dramatics.
The Shadow Strays is brutal, bloody, and badass as an action film, with over an hour of running time easily wasted. I found myself almost fast-forwarding through dialogue to get back to the action, something I am sure most audiences will be tempted to do. You can easily skip to the fights and still understand most of what is going on, which is the biggest problem with The Shadow Strays as a movie. Netflix is notorious for having films that overstay their welcome a bit too much. Still, this movie is so good in the action department that you will not want to risk missing a single roundhouse kick or decapitation. The Shadow Strays is one of the better action movies to come out this year and will have your jaw repeatedly dropping as each sequence outdoes the previous one.
The Shadow Strays is now streaming on Netflix.
