My second Timo Tjahjanto movie in as many weeks, The Shadow Strays is in line with other features I have seen from him, but with one notable difference. It features a collection of strong female characters. Tjahjanto has had strong female characters in his films before, but they haven't been the main focus. This has a strong female lead, and a couple of main supporting characters who show themselves just as capable of violence and death as any of the dangerous men onscreen.
Aurora Ribero is 13, an assassin who doesn't complete her latest mission. She still does a great job though, which leaves a lot of people already dead around her when she is assisted by Umbra (Hana Malasan). 13 is then ordered to rest and wait for new orders, which leaves her in an agitated state while she is cut off from her handler/network. The devil makes work for idle hands though, or so the say, and 13 ends up getting involved when she sees things getting ugly for a young boy, Monji (Ali Fikry), who lives near her. This pits 13 against a collection of ruthless and sadistic criminals, but it also leads to her being targeted by her own people.
Starting off with a set-piece that the film arguably never tops, The Shadow Strays is as stabby and limb-lopping as you'd expect, but shows a couple of main characters with a bit more finesse to their blade-work. Both 13 and Umbra are trained to execute their targets in the most efficient and effective ways, which allows Tjahjanto to present a slightly different fighting style whenever they are in control of the situation. Of course, the messiness and panic appear when they're not in control, and it doesn't always take a lot to change the balance of any fight. And every fight here tends to be a fight to the death.
Ribero is a good lead, very capable and very believable. Both she and Malasan look as if they could work their way through any gang of burly men like a powerful kitchen blender chops up vegetables. While they don't have to do to much with their characters outwith the fight scenes, they are more than capable when required to show hints of humanity glimpsed beneath their impassivity. Taskya Namya is a brilliantly entertaining psychopath named Soriah, another determined woman who just happens to be on the opposite side of the fight from 13, and Agra Piliang, Andri Mashadi, Kristo Immanuel, Adipati Dolken, and Arswendy Bening Swara portray the core selection of, mainly evil, male characters. Daniel Ekaputra makes a strong impression as Troika, a male assassin who has no qualms about taking out one of his colleagues, and Fikry is constantly vulnerable enough to make the motivation of our main character very understandable.
Using the same composer (Fajar Yuskemal) and same director of photographer (Batara Goempar) that he worked with on The Night Comes For Us, as well as many other familiar names, particularly if you scour through the many stunt performers, Tjahjanto knows how to deliver what fans have come to expect from him without it feeling exactly like everything else that he's done before. This is satisfying, and it's (for want of a better word) gnarly. It has a lot of similarities with The Night Comes For Us, but just a couple of key differences, especially when it comes to the background of the main characters, create a ripple effect that allows the whole film to feel very different from that most obvious cinematic reference point.
On the downside, you feel the 144-minute runtime in a couple of places, and there are some interesting moments that are there just to set up a sequel (that we may or may not get). It's still an easy recommend for those who like their action movies to make them wince while they also have to repeatedly pick their jaw up off the floor.
8/10
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