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In director Timo Tjahjanto’s The Shadow Strays, there’s a method of killing the lead heroine—known only by her codename 13 (Aurora Ribero)—that acts as the film’s thesis statement. After bludgeoning her enemies with whatever sharp object happens to be closest to her, 13 repeatedly taps them for good measure, rendering their corpses into even more of a disfigured pulp. It’s a double tap of the most extreme proportion, a bellicose excess that’s wholly unnecessary; if dead is better, then even more dead is best. In this way, The Shadow Strays elevates through sheer excess, taking its standard underworld-criminals-mess-with-the-wrong-assassin premise and injecting it with carnage-fueled spectacle that’s propelled by its own savage escalation. It’s maximalist action cinema at its most primally cathartic.
Ever quick to show rather than tell, after a laconic opening crawl reveals that there’s an organization of highly skilled assassins that “aren’t beholden to morals” and can kill for the right price, audiences quickly see 13 in action as she dispatches a clan of Yakuza. From this very first sequence, it’s evident that no appendage is safe from violence; the stabs and impalements are as pronounced as they are frequent. Whenever Tjahjanto’s camera zoomed in for a close-up, in particular on a henchman’s face, I was sure it was only so viewers would witness its mutilation up close.
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Though 13 makes quick work of most of the Yakuza, she accidentally kills the geisha she was trying to save from the men. Taking advantage of her moment of weakness, one of the henchmen then critically injures her before she’s saved by her mentor, Umbra (Hana Malasan). Umbra scolds 13 for her sloppiness (“We’re neutralizers. No rescuers or negotiators” she says steely). As reprimand, 13 goes back to her home in Jakarta where she lays low till her next assignment.
It is in those in-between moments, somewhere between beheading #22 and someone getting blown point-blank in the face with a shotgun, that The Shadow Strays loses some steam. There’s a compelling commentary on how 13’s employer prohibits her from stopping injustice happening in her immediate community. While groveling, she fixates on a young boy, Monji (Ali Fikry), and his mother who are harassed by local enforcers. Focusing on how 13 has to witness Monji and his mother be intimidated day by day while she waits for her next assignment becomes a way for Tjahjanto to weave in critique about the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of bureaucracy. It’s an admirable way to give the story stakes, but it feels haphazard and incongruent when contrasted with the meticulous precision of the film’s action sequences.
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Despite his actors giving it their all, it is as if the film is trying to speed through the film’s dramatic moments just to get to the next action scene, which begs the question of why they feel so long and extended at all. It feels more like an obligation and a chore than a legitimate desire. Eventually, though, 13’s has a heart too big for her good, realizing she’d much rather cut off the thumbs of her enemies than be idly twiddling her own. Try as she might to keep her head down and wait for her next assignment, it’s not too long before she tries to help Monji by going after the syndicate that killed his mother; sympathy is a knife, indeed.
Fueled by her righteous indignation, and carrying a chip on her shoulder for the perceived failure of her last assignment, 13 is pulled into the seedy underworld of Jakarta. Here, The Shadow Strays kicks into high gear and becomes a series of increasingly brutal action sequences held thinly together by the sinews of other various side plots (Tjahjanto manages to weave in a corrupted election and spotlights some Shadows who have betrayed the organization in this story).
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The fights are expertly staged, with Tjahjanto’s camera never being invasive to the point of claustrophobia save for a handful of sequences where he breaks formal convention (think the Challengers sequence where we adopt the perspective of a tennis ball being hit back and forth; now swap a tennis racket with a bat and the ball with someone’s head and you get the idea). He shoots wide, giving viewers a clear sense of the action, while also not being afraid to switch to a handheld camera to embody the kinetic rhythm of what’s unfolding. The film is a roulette of corridor fights that derives its excitement from seeing just how the next sequence can top the one before it, if not in complexity then at least brutality.
As grounded as the film’s action is, there’s also a lens of supernatural heft present thanks to cinematographer Muhammad Irfan and the sound design. Moments such as Umbra flicking blood with such force that the droplets hit the ground beneath her like meteors or how 13 makes efficient work of a group of henchman in a home invasion sequence, her body blending with the shadows which makes her feel like a demon with blades, there’s a mythical gravitas that Tjahjanto gives his fights which only heightens their impact.
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He ensures his characters have a grounded sense of place, which makes every new set piece an exercise in seeing how the proverbial Chekov’s guns will go off. When 13 fights henchmen in a kitchen, for example, we know it’s only a matter of time before the wok with boiling water and four working stove burners will get used. Nothing is wasted in the surroundings.
There’s just enough commentary to anchor the slaughter, the exploration remains about as deep as a paper cut. 13’s disillusionment with the shadows becomes the audience’s way to better grasp the themes Tjahjanto is exploring. There’s no difference between her assassins and the criminals they “righteously” butcher; they both follow a code of perverted loyalty where doubt in the establishment is a transgression worthy of excommunication and death. While The Shadow Strays threatens to be undone by its world-building and plotting, its commitment to bleakness grounds the film and it delivers some of the most merciless fight scenes you’ll see on-screen this year.
Summary
‘The Shadow Strays’ is maximalist action cinema at its most primally cathartic.
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