(This review is pretty detailed and spoilery. The movie is great, so consider just watching it and coming back.)

THE SHADOW STRAYS is the latest ultra-violent crime/martial arts epic from writer/director Timo Tjahjanto. Like THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (2018) and the more comedic THE BIG 4 (2022), it was produced by Netflix Indonesia, so you can probly watch it right now wherever you are. (Important subtitle tip: at least on my Roku you have to click “Other” to find the full subtitle menu if you want to choose English instead of English CC.) Like HEADSHOT (2016), it takes place in a world of elite assassins trained (at least in some cases) from childhood. These ones are known as Shadows, and they’re more of a global mercenary agency, like militarized ninjas.

We begin in a snowy Yakuza fortress in Japan, where seventeen year old Agent 13 (the incredible Aurora Ribero) rises up out of an armor collection to decapitate a sleazy boss. She kills so many guys, almost eliminates the entire clan, but gets distracted by collateral damage and has to be rescued by her mentor Instructor Umbra (Hana Malasan, THE TRAIN OF DEATH). Afterwards, Umbra gets called off to “some shit show in Cambodia,” so 13 is sent alone to an apartment in Jakarta.

The Shadows have some pretty good resources. On missions they wear ninja armor with night vision goggles, they carry easy-to-use nail bombs, and adrenaline shots for first aid. But 13’s home life is humble, she just does push-ups and goes to a certain pay phone in an abandoned parking garage to call in to the organization (in emergencies it can also dispense a gun). She doesn’t hear from Umbra for weeks, just hears a pre-recorded message reminding her to take her pills.

Yeah, these are a different kind of red pills than in THE MATRIX, they seem to discourage individuality and questioning, and maybe suppress the traumatic dreams she has about the death of her mother? But then, I don’t know, maybe she thinks it’s good to remember her mother at all, so she decides to stop taking them, and soon she’s questioning what she’s been told is her purpose as a Shadow: “We’re neutralizers. Not rescuers or negotiators. We simply kill.” She decides to try out being a rescuer.

She notices Asti (Jessica Marlein), a pregnant prostitute who lives down the hall, getting hassled and slapped by her pimp Haga (Agra Piliang, Joko Anwar’s Nightmares and Daydreams) and some other assholes. The next day she sees Asti’s body being taken away. She didn’t even really know the lady, but worries about her orphaned son Monji (Ali Fikry, 24 HOURS WITH GASPAR). I like how he tries to talk tough at first, claiming he’s better off without having to take care of a junkie mom, but then he breaks down. The next day she can’t find Monji but does find a flunky named Jeki (Kristo Immanuel, THE BIG 4) searching the apartment for anything that can connect the murder to Haga. So she forces Jeki to drive her to his boss at the Moonrose night club.

He makes up a story to get her in, but she drops it pretty quick and it becomes one ferocious teen vs. a criminal empire. Haga and his unhinged twin sister Soriah (Taskya Namya, THE VERGE OF DEATH) are excellent scumbag villains, as is their partner Pras (Adipati Dolken, THE CLERICS), a sadistic bastard cop who we also see break down into tears at the death of his junkie pimp rapist friend. But above them is Ariel (Andri Mashadi, THE BIG 4), the ambitious son of a powerful gubernatorial candidate. He’s a handsome dude who wears nice modern suits with skinny pants, passes for a respectable citizen, thinks he’ll rule Jakarta one day, also is a freaky weirdo who has a filthy dungeon below his mansion and puts on a leather gimp-type mask whenever he wants to get violent. The mask looks so weird on him, he really seems like a villain out of a manga, and I love that.

This could work with just the ol’ EQUALIZER bit – using her special set of skills to help a neighbor in trouble – but it’s bigger and better than that. Once I’ve settled in for that it cuts to Umbra’s mission in a forest in Cambodia. She gets back up from another agent, a giant name Troika (Daniel Ekaputra, MAY THE DEVIL TAKE YOU), who’s introduced lifting a guy by the head and squeezing so hard an eye pops out like the best moment in FRIDAY THE 13TH 3D. Look out for that guy. Shit. Umbra gets some very clear opportunities to, like her student back at home, break with her programming and do something better with her life. Also she gets dressed down by her boss, just like 13 did by her. But now all the pieces are on the board for a bigger conflict: the Shadows have learned about 13 killing like a hundred people without authorization in her war with dealers, traffickers, corrupt cops and politicians, so now the Shadows are on their way to “clean up the mess.”

I’ve seen reviews complaining about the length, and I respect their right to be completely wrong. There are great 90 minute movies, but this is like a HARD BOILED or a FACE/OFF or of course a THE NIGHT COMES FOR US, where much of its power comes from doing everything to the limit.

In today’s economy of shrinking action budgets, it’s so thrilling when we get a movie with such scope and production value, including varied locations – action in night clubs, apartments, garages, alleys, forests, in rain and snow, with all kinds of colors and lighting schemes. Tjahjanto (with cinematographer Batara Goempar Siagian and editor Dinda Amanda [GUNDALA]) stir together a masterful mix of techniques and imagery: whirling cameras, scenes lit by flares or strobe lights, fights seen through security cameras or night vision… the filmatism rocket boosts from careful, controlled movements to wild and propulsive ones and then back to static shots without sacrificing visual clarity.

Tjahjanto is an undeniable action master at this point, and the fights (choreographed by Muhammad Irfan, who did stunts in the RAID movies and choreographed the other Tjahjanto classics) overflow with those little beats and details I love. One small example is when she’s fighting a man in a plastic mask in a kitchen, the burners of the oven get turned on, she melts his mask with the flame, when he attacks her again she grabs a wok from the oven, splashes hot water onto him, then she weaponizes the wok in several ways: swinging it like a mallet, hitting with the edge, hooking it over his head, using it as a shield, throwing it. At other times she puts a sword in the ground a drags a guy crotch-first into it, swings around a stripper pole to kick a guy, pulls a broken sword out of herself like she’s unsheathing it, a guy does sword moves with a baseball bat but she snaps it and uses the splintered stub as precisely as a blade.

13 respects the BABY ASSASSINS rule that if she’s fighting someone bigger than her she somersaults around, runs up walls and slides between their legs. Her posture sometimes reminds me of Tony Jaa in TOM YUM GOONG, and she also shares his preference for Converse All-Stars, which I love. In my experience they’re not durable or supportive so it seems like they’d be bad for urban martial arts, but they’re such a classic look.

Guns are sometimes used (both as projectile and blunt weapons) but also many swords, knives, machetes, rocket launchers, bottles, a syringe, a screwdriver, a table, a hook, a receipt spike. There’s lots of fire, indoor motorcycle riding, car ramming – nothing is skimped on. Being a Tjahjanto film it’s extremely gruesome – a couple top shelf decapitations, some chopped off fingers, an amazing part where she’s brought to a scary boss and seems to be doomed until (SPOILER) she bites off his ear, slams his head against pavement and crushes his eyeballs into his brain with her thumbs.

The appeal is not just gore, though. Yes, there’s a clear homage to a famous bloodletting from Lone Wolf and Cub (comic and movies), but also, I think, to Luke Skywalker throwing down his light saber in RETURN OF THE JEDI? I believe that action-for-action’s-sake is legitimate, but most of my favorites are the ones that have some poetry and melodrama, imbuing their violence with themes and emotions that resonate with me. And that’s always been the case with Tjahjanto’s movies, including this one.

We may not have ever been an elite assassin who begins to gain morals, but we probly have experienced some amount of questioning a world view or even an indoctrination we grew up with. I noticed a generational theme going on here. Umbra shows signs of having a conscience like 13 does (she stops herself from flipping through photos of a target with his kid) but she enforces the status quo. “This is how the world works.” But she’s more liberal than the previous generation: “You think I’m being harsh. It’s nothing compared to what I experienced.” She had to call her teacher “Master” instead of “Instructor,” and snaps at 13 for getting that wrong.

So we’ve got that optimistic idea that each generation might rethink the standards of the previous one and do things a little better. Progress. Man, we all want that to be true, for the younger people to rid us of all this bigotry the old people saddled us with. I hope it’s true. But Ariel represents that other thing we also see in the world today, like the fuckers with the tiki torches who make us worry that “the arc of the moral universe” might not really “bend towards justice.” Ariel is no better than his corrupt dad, definitely crazier and less disciplined, also a weird pervert. True to life.

I love the weight put on 13’s name. Right near the beginning she tells Umbra “I’m not just a number, I have a name,” and almost tells her what it is, but Umbra stops her. After spending a day with Monji he calls her “Sis,” then suddenly realizes he doesn’t know her name, but decides he just wants to call her Sis anyway. When she’s forcing Jeki to drive her to his boss he asks her name, and she doesn’t answer, so he continues to call her “Missy” (according to the English subtitles), until he makes up the name Sari as a cover name while infiltrating the place. So when she later tells him her name is 13, it’s very meaningful that he asks her whether or not that’s what she wants to be called, maybe even as meaningful as when Umbra finally hears and acknowledges her given name.

The first words in the movie are the text “In a cruel and unforgiving world, exists a clandestine outfit…” So the most touching thing in the movie is that 13 and Jeki are, above all, forgiving of each other. She found him going through Monji’s apartment to cover up the murder, nodding off on stolen drugs, she has no idea about him taking care of his sick grandmother, as far as she knows he’s a piece of shit. And to him, she’s an enemy of his gang, going up against them, at the very least gonna get him in a bunch of trouble. But he chooses to help her get in, lies for her, and after being forced to go along with his boss, turns again to help her, endangering himself greatly. In a cruel and unforgiving world these two don’t judge each other. It’s beautiful.

THE SHADOW STRAYS is one of my favorite movies of the year. Highly recommended.

bonus super spoiler discussion:

One thing about this movie, in the end I’m happy because she makes it out of there, but things really did not go well! It’s pretty brutal, but it doesn’t feel like it’s subverting expectations, it’s just staying true to the “cruel, unforgiving world” we’ve been visiting. And I think that’s a pretty impressive threading of the needle – a satisfying action movie that still paints violence as largely counterproductive.

Looking back on it, it can be argued that not much has been accomplished except killing a bunch of people. 13 went off the reservation to save Monji, but he died anyway. Jeki did help 13 escape, but died for it. The rogue Shadows in Cambodia were killed (as far as we know) and didn’t even change Umbra’s mind. 13 did finally get through to Umbra, but only as Umbra was dying (one of the RETURN OF THE JEDI parallels). And though 13 asserts her right to create her own path, it may be compromised by the fact that she’s doing it with her strict mentor’s previously established stricter mentor. (That’s a really good sequel set up, with the kick-ass-ness of teaming her with the coolest actor in Indonesian cinema, but the discomfort of wondering whether that will erase the progress she’s made in this movie.)

In defense of the rebels in Cambodia, their actions caused the organization to send Umbra after them, which caused 13 to be left in her apartment instead of “returned to the facility,” giving her the time to disobey and break the chain. I’ve read many reviews referring to the rogue agents in Cambodia as the shadows who stray, but of course 13 is doing it too. May all shadows stray.