Yesterday I felt like watching a gory and bloody movie. So I went in search of it and I came across this movie. I must say it was satisfying to watch. If you are easily triggered by violence or blood, I advise that you don't get tempted with my review and watch this movie.
”The Shadow Strays” is not an American film. It is an Indonesian film. It is a movie that concentrates on the action, violence and a little bit of the storyline. I don't normally watch Indonesian movies but I didn't regret watching this one. It was a satisfying movie for me. In fact it exceeded expectations I had for it.
This movie reminded me of an old classic movie, The One-Armed Swordsman (1967) and Ninja Assassin (2009). You see these two movies were filled with violence that you could mistake them to be a slasher movie, but they are not. As I review this movie, I will try as much as possible to avoid screenshots of bloody scenes.
”The Shadow Strays (2024)” is an Indonesian film that was distributed by Netflix. It is an action crime thriller film. It was written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto. It starred Aurora Ribero, Hana Malasan, Taskya Namya, Agra Piliang, Andri Mashadi, Chew Kin Wah.
The storyline of this movie is based on the tale of an organized international group of assassins who call themselves ”Shadow of Death”. Nobody knows who leads them and no one knows who hires them. They hide in the dark, lurking and waiting for the right time to take out their victims leaving trails of blood, severed head, body parts and violence in their wake.
Now the movie goes on to introduce us to a 17-year-old trained assassin with a codename, 13 and who is also a shadow member. 13 was on a mission in Japan to assassinate her primary target, the leader of a criminal clan. During this mission, 13 succeeded in killing the primary target but afterwards accidentally killed a bystander and gave room for her primary target’s henchman to shoot her multiple times incapacitating. So her instructor, Umbra, intervened before she was killed.
Umbra saw this as a sign of weakness from 13 and pulled her from the future mission. Umbra suspended and ordered 13 to go into hiding, stay low while undergoing a psych retraining in Jakarta. Afterwards, Umbra is tasked on a mission in Cambodia by her handler.
On the other hand, still in suspension, 13 begins to experience nightmares of her mother's death. Though she tries to contact her instructor, all attempts fail and met with a robotic voice on the other end. Not long after, 13 encountered a young boy, Monji and his mother were assaulted by some drug thugs. Later, Monji's mother turned up dead. Will 13 interfere in Monji’s ordeal? What happens to 13’s order of suspension?
My Favorite Character
Aurora Ribero as 13
You Aurora was an iconic actor. She was amazing and wonderful with her role. I couldn't tell if she was acting because she was very convincing and all the personality traits of her character that she portrayed came natural to her. Her character was a resilient being with so much bottled up rage, past traumas, and the need to dish out justice. She had the spotlight and retained it perfectly all through the movie duration. In the end, I was proud of her performance.
Ali Fikri as Monji
Ali was amazing with his role. He acted well. He was able to show the audience what a boy of his age whose mother had been murdered recently is going through adjusting to life on his own. He grieved the loss of his mother with anger, regret, and plans of revenge. The world was against him, he was a teenage boy who was weak and a prey in the game of survival. Regardless, he showed no signs of weakness till the end. I was able to connect with pain and grief. He was AMAZING!
Kristo Immanuel as Jeki
Kristo’s character was annoying at the beginning but then he became a great asset to 13. He was a young man who helped 13 get what she wanted regardless of the fact that his life was on the line. He didn't care, he wanted all the chaos to stop. Without his character, I doubt there would be resolution. I enjoyed his performance. He is witty, sneaky, brave and smart. He was also a comic relief for me.
Overall the cast of this movie was amazing! They all played their role well and they were able to elicit strong emotions from me that kept me on the edge of my seat.
My Review And Rating
This movie was a great and satisfying watch. It was worth the time, entertaining, oddly gruesome, and thrilling. The action was well done and fast-paced. I enjoyed the choreography and the cinematography was awesome. The bloody scenes were of good camera work, giving a good wide range of view. The sword scenes were excellent too. Every scene action carried me along like I was there to witness every moves, punches and kills. The stunts were superb and well performed.
The plot was okay but I felt like it should have been written in a better way whereby 13 has a happy ending that denotes a peaceful life afterwards. The end wasn't well resolved, unless the producers wanted to do a spin off to show us how 13 lives her life afterwards. I feel the end was rushed and quickly tied off while still leaving loose ends behind.
A few things that didn't impress in this movie is tha the characters lack motives/backstories. I didn't know what their motivations were and each character appeared two-dimensional which made it difficult for singular performance focus. Also, the usage of guns was not convincing and realistic to me. I mean why would you empty a dozen bullets into your victim's skull when a bullet is enough for the job.
Rating this movie, I will give it a 7 out of 10 stars. It was good despite the flaws. If you are into bloody violence thriller action, then this movie is for you. All you need to do is sit back and enjoy.
All images above are from the movie screenshots
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I'm not a big fan of gory movies, but this one seems to deliver a mix of action and thrills. I like that you mention Aurora Ribero's performance; it's always great to see actors who really give themselves over to the role. Cheers!
Yes, this movie was a perfect mix. Your attention can easily be diverted from the goriness to the action scenes. It was indeed a good watch. Thank you for the comment.
The Shadows Strays is fantastic, it is an impressive film in its very good action scenes, I saw it at the time of its release, but I have not reviewed it yet and I will watch it for the third time to make a good review because I think many people underestimate the story and I think the behavior and suffering of "13" is very important for everything that happens in the film.
Hopefully Timo can quickly reach a deal with Netflix and make his well deserved sequel with a bigger budget.
I recommend you to watch on Netflix "The Night come for Us", directed by Timo and it has better fight scenes, which are made by martial artists and that is also important in this new film, since the main characters do not practice martial arts and they had to learn all the moves to make the good fight sequences.
The way the movie was resolved I suspect a spin off but I wasn't sure of it. This is first time watching Timo's work but it was worth it.
I am going to look for this immediately and watch it. Lets see what Timo has in install for me there. I appreciate the recommendation. Thank you for the visit and comment.