Bullet Points: The Night Comes For Us
This might be the best time in history to be an action fan. It’s not because of the vast amount of good movies coming out of the US or Europe, though, it’s mainly because of the emergence of the Indonesian and South Korean action market over the past 15 years. While South Korea has been putting out intense action movies for a little longer, the Indonesian explosion really came with 2011’s The Raid: Redemption. Let’s see if this first Netflix production in Indonesia can keep the streak of excellent action going.
Synopsis: Ito (Joe Taslim) is a gangland enforcer working with the Triads in the crime ridden Golden Triangle of East Asia. After a violent interaction in a small village, Ito rescues a little girl and retreats to his hometown with his old crew. It’s there that the Triads chase him down and threaten to kill everything in their path.
- The Six Seas: Ito is a member of the Six Seas. A group of Triad enforcers who keep the gun/drug/people smuggling game running in the Golden Triangle. He’s already in this position when we meet him but we do flashback once or twice to when he and Iko’s Arian first decide to leave home and join up with the Triads. I guess he’s finally had enough of all the killing.
- Save the girl, lose the world: During a routine extermination of an entire village, Ito finally makes the decision that killing one more little girl is going to be the end of him. He makes the big turn and takes out his own crew of killers instead. Why did he finally make the switch after three years of killing? Who knows…
- Meet Iko: Our old friend Iko Uwais from The Raid series finally makes his appearance. He does so in the perfect way with a killer fight with some guys at a night club. Say what you will about Iko’s acting but his choreography on screen is amazing. He plays an old friend of Ito’s named Arian. I was a little confused by Arian for most of the movie. Was he trying to help Ito and the little girl or not? Oh well…just enjoy the destruction, I guess.
- Empathizing with your hero: I gave up trying to understand what exactly was happening with some of the characters. Hell, the main “hero” of the movie is a murderer who has been working for the Triads for the past 3 years. He’s not exactly a role model. John Wick got around it by having him retired and being a dog lover. Maybe they should have introduced Joe Taslim’s pet Yorkie?
- The halfway point: By the time that the movie hit the midway point, I was exhausted. I almost had to pause it to take a short break. The film doesn’t slow down much to get the characters across. Many of them just show up, get in massive fights, have their limbs sliced off, and then are left bleeding on the floor.
- Billiards brawl: Taslim has been wounded so many times by now that he would have needed a trash bag full of spare blood to stay alive. He decides to make one final attempt at redemption as he goes back to his old stomping grounds and takes on a dozen or more henchmen surrounding a pool table. It’s another great fight in a movie full of them. Each scene stays fresh with the types of killing and the diversity of death, but the story is almost non-existent.
- Cat Fight: The Raid 2 and Headshot veteran Julie Estelle shows up to help Ito get out of some jams. I missed the part where they said who she was but she apparently had a soft spot for the little girl so here we are. A handful of members of the Triad hit squad show up and she dispatches them easily enough. That leaves only her and two different women who are intent on killing the little girl. It leads to a massively awesome fight between the three. Estelle looks so much more comfortable in the action here than she did the first time I saw her in The Raid 2. The brutality of their fight is at least equal to the fights of Taslim and Uwais but the effect is greater because there is always the lingering thought that she is the last line of defense for the little girl. A fantastic throwdown for the ladies.
- Ito and Arian: Holy crap! The final showdown between Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais is worth the price of admission. Their fight reminded me a lot of the duel between Anakin Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi at the end of Episode 3. They duke it out all over the building using a smorgasbord of killing devices. Neither man will ever be the same after this one, that’s for sure. The final few scenes in the movie do a lot to bring about the story between Ito’s quest for redemption and Arian’s quest for power. It’s much more pronounced when the two finally get time to talk instead of just beating each other to a bloody pulp.
The Verdict: Fans of The Raid and Headshot have plenty to cheer about with The Night Comes for Us. Iko Uwais gets top billing but it’s really the Joe Taslim show. He carries most of the film as his character battles his inner demons along with about 200 murdering Triads. The film has a two hour runtime but most of it is balls-to-the-wall action. Normally that would be a massive positive but The Night Comes for Us could have used a little more quiet time. I still had a whole lot of fun watching it but I would still put it behind both Raid movies on my list. Joe Taslim could definitely carry a film but my recommendation would be for someone to beef up the characters a bit before sending them out to their doom. All in all, a fantastic action movie with character flaws, but one that is streaming on Netflix and well worth your time.
