Timo Tjahjanto still hits harder than almost anyone else in messy action epic The Shadow Strays
The Indonesian filmmaker includes all the inventive gore one could ask for, but hides it in bloated melodrama.
Photo: Netflix
If nothing else, a Timo Tjahjanto movie is guaranteed to blow your hair back. That’s the only phrase that evokes the feeling of being pinned to your seat by the hurricane-like force of the Indonesian filmmaker’s action scenes, which hit hard and kick harder in bone-shattering displays of hyper-kinetic ultraviolence. Tjahjanto also makes horror movies, and his approach to the two genres is largely the same. His style marries martial-arts kineticism and splatter-film overkill, and its intensity has proven impactful in recent years (the director’s influence is all over Monkey Man, for example).
Excess is the only real imperative in Tjahjanto’s movies, which raises the question: How can he ever possibly keep topping himself, year after year? He takes a two-pronged approach in his latest, The Shadow Strays, the second title produced under Tjahjanto’s multi-film deal with Netflix. There are the action scenes, of course, which are just as gobsmacking here as they were in 2017’s The Night Comes For Us. Then there’s the epic runtime of the movie itself: 144 minutes of action melodrama, split among multiple characters scattered all over Asia.
The story begins in Japan, where a cozy night in for a yakuza boss turns into a symphony of flashing blades and arterial spray as a pair of assassins infiltrate his compound. Their agency, the Shadow organization, has a reputation much like that of the ninjas of yore. They specialize in quietly slipping in and out of murder scenes unnoticed, although the masked killers are skilled enough in hand-to-hand combat that they can easily fend off a dozen yakuza bodyguards in black suits and skinny ties.
When one of the Shadows is accidentally unmasked, her opponent is shocked to find out that his adversary is a woman—a touch that feels a bit retrograde, given how ubiquitous female assassins have become in action movies. But the reveal is still badass, so we’ll let it slide. The all-female Shadows are trained not to feel any kind of emotion towards killing or humanity in general, which does put a gender-neutral cast on what follows when 17-year-old Shadow trainee 13 (Aurora Ribero) loses her nerve on the Japan job and is grounded in Jakarta.