The Shadow Strays

Stripped of her past and trained in the deadly art of fucking your shit up, adolescent assassin Codename 13 (Aurora Ribero) works diligently for a clandestine collective of killers known as The Shadow. After a mission goes sideways in Japan, her mentor, Umbra (Hana Malasan), picks up the fumble, but boots her to Indonesia on a disciplinary probation. While laying low in the slums of Jakarta, a chance encounter with a young boy who has run afoul of a local crime syndicate soon embroils the restless and rebellious 13 in an unsanctioned crusade, inciting a bevy of bloody battles that paint the town every shade of red, as well as drawing the ire of her merciless management.

Not since The Night Comes for Us has Indonesia’s preeminent architect of ultra-violent action, Timo Tjahjanto, conducted such a meticulous martial arts massacre. Opening with a bravura set piece that lays waste to dozens of yakuza, his latest proceeds as a kind of taxonomy of the action genre with a string of sword fights, shoot-em-ups, and old-fashioned fisticuffs, as 13 is pitted against a murderer’s row of, well… murderers.

Stuffed with palpable nods to action classics, as well as Tjahjanto’s prior bonafides (Headshot, TIFF ’16), the whole extravaganza recalls the excess of John Woo’s Hard Boiled, right down to the warehouse showdown that goes to hell in a parade of pyrotechnics. Woo’s epic was made on the precipice of his arrival in Hollywood, and, given Tjahjanto’s impending studio assignments (a sequel to Nobody and a US remake of Train to Busan), Midnighters will appreciate The Shadow Strays as a bid for a similar milestone.

PETER KUPLOWSKY

Content advisory: explicit violence, sexual violence, accident trauma, drug use, mature themes, coarse language