 | MOVIE DETAILS • Name: The Night Comes for Us • Year: 2018 • Country: Indonesia • Director: Timo Tjahjanto • Main cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Julie Estelle • Runtime: 121 minutes • Production company: Screenplay Infinite Films • TRAILER |
Especially in the last years, Indonesia is becoming one of the exporters of most intense and crazy action flicks combining impossible martian arts choreographies and frantic gunshots. Perhaps the best known by the audience is The Raid: Redemption (2011), but that is merely the point of the iceberg because every year a good bunch of similar titles bloom. And Timo Tjahjanto is one of the names to take in consideration in this new genre invasion. Besides being part of the chapter anthologies The ABCs of Death (2012) and V/H/S/2 (2013), he formed a filmmaking duo with Kimo Stamboel where they called themselves The Mo Brothers and released some notorious films like Macabre (2009), Killers (2014) and Headshot (2016). Now, Timo Tjahjanto flies by his own as a writer and director of The Night Comes for Us (2018), and the result is promising.
Do you like action movies? Jumps, kicks, gunfights, the good guys invincible while the bad guys are falling one by one like flies? Then, The Night Comes for Us (2018) could be a movie for you. But if you like some kind of density and a nice plot, maybe you should stay away from it. Because the story is pretty lame, to be honest, the kind of gangsters struggling for domination and revenge that we’ve seen many times. With some small dosage of treason and the morals of friendship and loyalty. A very Asian thing, that is true. But in terms of storytelling, it’s not very well built. In fact, it’s a little bit laughable if you analyze it separately. But then, why am I giving this movie such a high rate? Because we are not watching The Night Comes for Us (2018) for the drama, my friends. We are here to see people beating the shit out of each other! And, in that sense, this movie is fantastic!
In the 2 hours of the length of the movie, perhaps altogether there are only around 10 or 15 minutes of non-conflict. The rest is all fights, gunshots and car chases. And those moments of calm before the tempest feel kind of ridiculous. The conversations are quite stupid, and as mentioned before the drama plot is so hollow that it is better to forget about it. But then, in terms of action, we have here some of the most amazing choreographies and tricks seen for a while. Those things that the lovers of the genre savour. The 2 male protagonists Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim were the stars of The Raid: Redemption (2011), and the female star Julie Estelle was also part of its sequel, The Raid 2 (2014). That’s enough said, those people know how to perform good action sequences.
The Night Comes for Us (2018) is scheduled to be part of the Netflix catalog from the 19th of October, but first I was one of the lucky ones to attend to a special screening at the Sitges Film Festival. All of us there knew what we were going to witness, and it was a joy to be in a theater where the audience was acclaiming, clapping and laughing hard at the marvelous action sequences. So you are warned, if action movies are your thing, run to your nearest Netflix screen and play this one. You’re welcome.
RATE: 7/10
IMDB URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt6116856
