The Night Comes For Us

The most ignored safety warning ever

You know that feeling when you've had a shit day, you're in bad form and all you want to do is watch something crunchy. Someone might have rightly pissed you off but instead of hitting them you decide to live vicariously through a violent movie instead. You know, the eh...healthy option. If you know that feeling well then I have just the film for you. A film that's unlike anything you may have seen before. A film that you might actually turn off within the first 10 minutes but if you stick with it you'll have a fun if slightly queasy time.

An Indonesian village is massacred in revenge for a missing shipment of Triad money. On the beach there's a sole survivor, young girl called Reina and one of the gunmen, Ito (Joe Taslim), suffers a crisis of conscience and can't bring himself to kill her. Ito's a member of The Six Seas, a team of 6 men and women who are a special branch of the Triad, a branch that has free reign to use whatever tactics necessary to get their jobs done. Because Ito has gone against orders he's marked for death and the other 5 members of The Six Seas are out for his head. One of the other members is a Macau based gangster called Arian (Iko Uwais) and him and Ito go way, way back.

This was something else. I'm not quite sure if I enjoyed it but there's no denying it's an experience. It's quite possibly the most physically violent (non horror) film I've ever seen. The film takes great pleasure in reducing the human body down to it's most basic components, blood, meat and bone and at times all 3 are literally spraying across the screen. A fight in an abbatoir utilising meat hooks and bone saws, a man's head torn apart by automatic gunfire inside a paddywagon, an assassin armed with razor wire who's not averse to whipping off limbs to win a fight fast, faces and throats decimated with carpet knifes and pool balls. It's gobsmacking when a fight scene ends with the defeated side's intestines spilling out and you realise that it's one of the film's milder moments. It's a whole smorgasbord of meaty treats but only those with the toughest of constitutions will make it to the end. Director Timo Tjahjant's camerawork and the fight scenes choreographed by the lead actors thankfully change things up constantly and while the fight scenes may become numbing eventually, they damn sure never become boring.

Story bud?

Hideous brutality aside it's fairly standard stuff storywise. A bad guy grows a conscience and has to protect his young charge. We've seen it a million times before but when it's this stylishly done, this packed full of vim and breathless action it's easy to overlook cliche. It's themes of male friendship and the depths of those relationships brought to mind the films that poured out of Hong Kong in the early 90's especially John Woo's earlier films. But Hong Kong action had it's time. Now it's the turn of Indonesia to pump out it's own brand of insane action. The Raid, The Raid 2, Headshot and now this. 

All four films starred Iko Uwais but this time he's not the hero. But he's not exactly the villain either. The man has an immense physicality and seeing him in action as Arian is jawdropping. Last month's Hollywood actioner Mile 22 had him too and utterly wasted him so it's a joy seeing him in full flow here. Joe Taslim who also starred in The Raid is Ito. He's grand, an enormously physical martial artist too but he just comes off as a bit dull compared to Arian. Julie Estelle as the mysterious operator turns up too far into the film to make much of an impact but one piece of finger based carnage involving her will either make you cheer or puke depending on your disposition.

If you've seen and enjoyed The Raid films you'll be able for this. Like those the bare bones plot is just an excuse to string together increasingly chaotic moments of brutality but come on, no one watches films like this for the story. You watch them because you want to see people getting fucked the fuck up. Here you'll have your bloodlust sated and then some. Director Timo Tjahjant made Headshot and now this. I can't even begin to imagine what he'll come up with next.

Available to stream on Netflix right now.