Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Holy shit.
The Night Comes For Us comes to us from director Timo Tjahjanto, the acclaimed filmmaker behind films like Macabre, Killers, and the recent Headshot. But none of those films prepared audiences for the batshit bloodbath that is The Night Comes For Us, a film that repeatedly reduces human beings into damp piles of meat, filled end-to-end with ludicrously ambitious action set-pieces before climaxing in a one-on-one fistfight so lengthy, so complex, so audacious, it took weeks to film.
Joe Taslim stars as Ito, a legendary criminal enforcer and member of the ‘Six Seas’, an elite group of killers for the fearsome triad. But Ito’s amoral existence finally reaches the breaking point when he takes part in the massacre of a small village and discovers one small girl among the bloodied ruins. Unwilling/unable to snuff out so innocent a life, Ito turns on his own people and rescues the child.
Getting out just isn’t that easy, though, and Ito soon finds himself hounded by an unending onslaught of thugs and killers after both him and the girl, a group that includes his former friend Arian (Iko Uwais, who also choreographed the film). Soon, Ito and his small band of allies find themselves fighting tooth and nail to escape the bloodbath that Jakarta has devolved into. But if Ito wants out, he’s going to need to carve his way free with his wits, his fists, and just… just so many machetes.
Also starring Julie Estelle as an unnamed, deadly Operative, The Night Comes For Us is planned as the first film in a trilogy. After it blew the roof off the joint at the recent Fantastic Fest, we can only hope those future entries come sooner rather than later.
But did everyone feel that way, or is this one whirlwind ride of gore and mayhem that not everyone wants to take? — Brendan
Next Week’s Pick:
Based on Madeleine L’Engle’s celebrated novel, Disney’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time didn’t manage to grab the box office spotlight despite a star-studded cast and the direction of Ava DuVernay. Perhaps audiences bristled at the fantasy’s film’s immediately weird aesthetics —it looks wacky as heck — but with the film now on Netflix, we are more than ready to give this a watch and we want you to join us! — Austin
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review on any MCU film to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
David Jaffe
Timo Tjahjanto’s action masterpiece The Night Comes For Us is bar none the most violent movie I’ve ever seen (or at least it feels like it). I’ve never seen a pool ball used that way. It keeps one upping the fights until the end. When I saw it at Fantastic Fest, we all vocally reacted to each and every punch. We fell in love with White Boy Bobby and Ito and the Operator and all the other characters. The plot is threadbare but when the action is this good, who cares? Get ready for the most violent and insane action film of your life. This is a movie to be watched on as loud as you can on the biggest screen you can see it on with as many friends as possible. Strap in and enjoy. (@FilmAddictDavid)
The Team
I mean…holy fuck.
I thought I was ready. I’ve seen the Raids, I’ve seen other Tjahjanto joints before, so obviously The Night Comes For Us couldn’t have too many surprises, could it? Turns out, yeah, it could, because this is unlike any other action film I’ve ever seen. Tjahjanto takes him at first laying out the pieces of this particular underworld, letting you get a sense of who knows who and the general shape of things.
And then, well, he feeds it into a lawnmower and lets red fountains coat the screen. You’d have to go back to an Evil Dead sequel or maybe even Dead Alive to find a movie that takes this much pleasure from sustained bodily destruction, as Tjahjanto rains down every act of flesh-devastation he can imagine. As shot by Gunnar Nimpuno and cut by Arifin Cuunk, with choreography from Uwais himself, every fight sequence is electrifying, all the moreso because you enter each one thinking, “There’s no way they could top the last one.” Yet sure enough, Tjahjanto finds some fresh way to pulverize a human body in a way that makes you jump, laugh, cheer, or gasp.
Wading through this mayhem is an accomplished leading man performance by Joe Taslim and a deft villainous turn by Iko Uwais. Both men know exactly what is required of them in a film this relentless and understand how to find the quiet beats that illustrate a character between beatdowns. But, honestly, nothing I say here can prepare you for just how relentless this thing is. Go see it. (@theTrueBrendanF)
The Raid films have a place in my heart forever, and have become somewhat of a benchmark for what modern action cinema can achieve. Those films also essentially birthed an industry in Indonesia and put a host of Indonesian talent out there onto the international market for all of us to experience. The Night Comes For Us is the remarkable next level for that group of talent. We’ve already known that several breakout careers were born out of The Raid. But this film reshuffles the deck, doubles down on its inherent Indonesian-ness, and inherits the title as the latest international contender to show the world what action cinema can be. It’s hard to say where this film will rank among the action pantheon, but it’s certainly a new benchmark in rip-roaring, crowd-pleasing, on screen violence. (@Ed_Travis)
Save for one innocent, the little girl around whom the conflict revolves, every character in this film is a bad guy. The only difference in who you root for is that when faced with a chance to do something right comes along, some of them make the choice to do it.
This thing is unbelievably wild and violent, and there’s no chance to get complacent with its violent twists and turns. The film offers up characters and dispatches them with reckless abandon. What really stood out to me is that our protagonists aren’t invincible supermen who get through their fights relatively unscathed — even when they survive, they’re stabbed, shot, mangled, and broken. And without giving too much away, there’s one character beat that I was expecting and hoping for — it even gets teased a bit, but things don’t go at all the way I envisioned.
Also, give Julie Estelle her own franchise, stat. (@VforVashaw)
Next week’s pick: