Overview
After sparing a girl's life during a massacre, an elite Triad assassin is targeted by an onslaught of murderous gangsters.
If you like your martial arts flicks to be ultra gory then The Night Comes for Us is the movie for you. We get dropped straight into the action: when a few villagers have stolen some drugs from the Triad syndicate, the entire village gets wiped out by Ito (Joe Taslim), who is one of the so-called Six Seas: the Triad’s enforcers who are sent to take any measures necessary to keep things under control. For some reason, Ito takes pity on a young girl and decides to spare her – making him now an enemy of the Triad. So, the Triad sends copious numbers of killers to hunt down Ito. All of this of course to set up many a bloody battle. The Triad also sends in Arian (Iko Uwais) to take care of Ito and take his place. But there are more villains in play, including the mysterious Operator (Julie Estelle), who is on her own mission to take out all of the Six Seas.
If you have seen The Raid (1 and 2) you will have recognised the names above, as these three all played excellent parts in these instant classics of modern Indonesian action cinema. So, does that mean The Night Comes for Us is pretty much The Raid 3? Not really; it doesn’t have The Raid 1’s simple storyline or The Raid 2’s beautiful cinematography, but it does have The Raid’s non-stop action and lots and lots of gory fights; it is actually a lot gorier than the Raid movies.
The fight choreography was done by Iko Uwais himself and is generally very entertaining, but at times so over the top that you can’t help but crack a smile as bodyparts break in very unnatural directions and blood drenches the screen. Luckily all the victims appear to have an extra gallon of blood to spare, and for instance having one’s bowels hanging on the outside of your body is apparently only a minor inconvenience when fighting. No tool is left unused; knives, blades, saws, steel pipes, guns, razor wire, and more implements cut and slice their way through fingers, arms, legs, faces, skulls, groins and other body parts.
The storyline is actually slightly convoluted and a few side paths don’t really go anywhere, but these are minor gripes – they serve their purpose of moving from Fight A to Fight B, and C, and D, and countless more. And there is a kind of closure at the end of the movie, maybe even redemption.
If you can overlook the OTT-ness of some of the fight choreography and the over-acting of some of the gruesomely dying, then The Night Comes for Us is gory good fun.
★★★½
