An introduction is due. This movie epitomizes everything I love about a certain strain of cinema, what this resurrected blog is all about. Bare knuckle, in your face asian genre cinema. The no holds barred, what the fuck Hong Kong or wherever experience! I will hold no candle to politically correct nonsense, I will cover movies that contain dubious comments and acts that may offend. Panty-Hose Hero is a classic in my house but so is Beautiful Boxer from 2004. Expect yakuza, triad, Korean melodrama and kung fu. I will have a special emphasis on the forgotten and the unknown, who needs yet another review of Drunken Master? Anyway, on with the show...
Straight out of Indonesia, The Night Comes For Us is an ultra violent gangster fable in which see the return of Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais from in their 2011 breakout film The Raid, only this time the setting is gangsters, not cops, within the drug trade. Taslim is Ito, a mob enforcer, who gets cold feet when he is supposed to shoot a kid, but instead shoots his compatriots, flees with the kid and shit ensues. Uwais is a former pal who is sent Ito's way to sort shit out.
The Night Comes For Us is directed by Timo Tjahjanto, a director whose main background is horror. You can tell as the blood flows in this flick like milk from a dairy cow. Blood splats, bones snap, heads break. The initial fight strewn carnage scene is set in a butcher shop and fuck me if it's not something amazing. Hooks, slabs of meat, gristle flying, bullets, everything hits the fucking wall and slides down the screen. Utter madness. PUNCH. KICK. GOUGE. KILL. Believe me, people die in this, it makes the Raid movies seem like Carry On Screaming.
Yet beyond the carnage there is a flicker of melodrama, the kind that connects me to old school Hong Kong cop flicks like Tiger Cage. The kind that makes you root for a character, however slight their personality is portrayed. Like so many Hong Kong flicks or Japanese titles, it's not about the story but shit that goes down, and oh boy does shit go down. Brawls, martial arts, knifing,shootings, it's all in here. You even get a pair of weird female hench-women, the kind Cynthia Khan would have kicked the shit out of in 1991. Only this time it falls to Julie Estelle, who really needs to star in her own vehicle. The absolute pinnacle of modern action cinema in my opinion.
White Boy Bobby for Prime Minister!
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