Timo Tjahjanto’s ‘The Shadow Strays’ may be the bloodiest film of 2024

The Shadow Strays coheres around the same idea. 13 isn’t a “child,” exactly; nor is she a stone-cold executioner. “She herself is an innocent being,” Tjahjanto tells JoySauce. “She's good at killing, but she herself is innocent.” The film immediately dramatizes this contrast through its kinetic, bloody opening scene, in which 13 successfully takes out her target, a sadistic pervert in charge of a Yakuza clan, but freezes like a deer in a hunter’s site when she unintentionally blows away a bystander—the geisha the Yakuza leader was in the middle of abusing. Flinching nearly leaves 13 for dead, but 13 has yet to fully shed her humanity, so her reaction to her fatal mistake makes sense. It’s even natural. 

13’s steely mentor, Umbra (Hana Malasan), swoops in to save her and to clean up the mess the only way a Shadow knows: By single handedly massacring the Yakuza, down to the last man. (As if to drive the “childhood lost” theme further, this poor final gangster is heard talking to his young daughter on the phone before 13’s arrival.) 13 is suspended for her lapse; The Shadow Strays spins its plot from her time off of work, putting her in the orbit of a boy named Monji (Ali Fikri), orphaned when his mother overdoses on heroin. 13 knows her organization’s rules. She’s not supposed to get involved. But she can’t help herself. “They become kindred souls in that way,” Tjahjanto points out. Each resonates with the other. They share noodles together, and visit Monji’s mom’s grave at 13’s suggestion—moments of rare tenderness in otherwise harsh circumstances.

The tension between 13’s compassion and Umbra’s ruthlessness occupies a fundamental space in Tjahjanto’s cinema. “I think there's something really captivating, and endearing even, when it comes to the theme of loss of innocence,” he says. “None of us chooses to be thrown into this often violent and dark world.” His experiences in fatherhood are fuel for this philosophical concept; it’s top of mind when he thinks about his own children. “I wonder, ‘At what point are they going to be exposed to this,’ you know?” In The Shadow Strays, the answer to that question is “between the ages of 11 and 17.” Maybe that makes Monji lucky; in the real world, the range can dip all the way to infancy. At least he gets to be a preteen. But that’s the awful truth Tjahjanto installs in films like The Night Comes For Us and The Shadow Strays: Violence’s pervasion in peaceful existence is part of the human condition. 

Grant that the biggest motivating factor for Tjahjanto’s audience is the peerless craft he puts into his action sequences, from gun fights to sword duels to car chases. But grant also that sans any recognizable human element, we would have very little reason to care about his meticulously orchestrated mayhem, and by consequence, we would have less reason to watch them. No, you likely won’t walk away from The Shadow Strays feeling a stronger bond to all mankind; yes, you’ll be gobsmacked that no one died while filming scenes choreographed in hails of bullets. Once you recover from shock at the volume of spent ordnance, your heart will bleed for 13, Monji, 13’s reluctant gangster sidekick Jeki (Kristo Immanuel), and even Umbra—much like how various henchmen bleed when 13 hacks off their limbs. That’s empathy!

"I like to believe I'm not the kind of filmmaker who likes to punish my audience. That's why I tend to sort of avoid films that have bleak endings. I personally feel a certain responsibility to carry on a sense of hope in humanity."

Against preconceptions based on the content of his work, Tjahjanto actually considers himself a hopeful artist. “Honestly, as much as my films tend to be violent, gritty, and visceral, I like to believe I'm not the kind of filmmaker who likes to punish my audience. That's why I tend to sort of avoid films that have bleak endings,” Tjahanto explains. “I personally feel a certain responsibility to carry on a sense of hope in humanity.” He cites legendary Japanese maestro Akira Kurosawa as one of his favorite filmmakers for that reason: From Seven Samurai, to Rashomon, to Ikiru, and even to Yojimbo, Kurosawa’s movies encapsulate hope, and often represent dreams. Tjahjanto weaves his own version of this metaphor into The Shadow Strays. “It’s about showing that even when your intentions are good, it doesn't mean things will go your way,” he says. “It doesn't matter how much you sacrifice something. Sometimes things just don’t go your way.”

In 13’s case, and without revealing how the film ends, things don’t go exactly her way, but she’s still able to satisfy a promise she makes to Monji early in the movie—to reunite him with his mother. “Often, faith and destiny is beyond our control,” Tjahjanto adds, “and I think my approach is less nihilistic, and more of a Buddhist approach to life.” It’s a matter of perspective. Critics typically characterize his films as unsparing in terms of their violence and pessimism; Tjahjanto downplays over-the-top carnage in The Shadow Strays compared to The Night Comes For Us, but you wouldn’t know it from reading the former’s reviews. “Even with me restraining myself, [The Shadow Strays] is still being held as one of the bloodiest action films of 2024,” Tjahjanto says, bemused. “Maybe that just goes to show I am kind of already in my own world when it comes to graphic kills and whatnot, but I feel like this film is actually significantly less violent than The Night Comes For Us.” 

Blood splatters over walls and ceilings, and across actors’ faces, throughout The Shadow Strays, like paint flying off the brushstrokes in a Jamie Nares painting. Still, the movie does feel mildly sanitized next to The Night Comes For Us’ relentless arterial spray, and this is by design. “I wanted to prioritize the characters’ evolution, their journey into becoming a whole human,” Tjahjanto professes. “That was the challenge for me. I want people to remember 13, and Umbra and Monji, not just as killing machines or cannon fodder, but also as human characters that undergo specific journeys.” Setting that as his brief meant less pressure to outdo the stunt work and choreography that rocketed The Night Comes For Us to acclaim and action cinema prestige. That movie is about human journeys, too. It’s also about the joy of seeing Taslim, a man so fast that he was asked to slow down by his director on Mortal Kombat, send a goon flying into a warehouse sign reading “safety is everyone’s responsibility” at point-blank range with a shotgun blast. The character-driven quality is there; it’s just secondary to action.

Safety, of course, was everyone’s responsibility on The Shadow Strays; it’s difficult to watch just about any Indonesian action film and wonder how nobody died shooting it, but apart from one incident with a crew member, no one got hurt during production. (That one incident, Tjahjanto notes, was completely unrelated to filming, and happened just because “[the crew member] was riding a motorbike on the weekends.”) If anything, Ribero and Malasan got too into their choreography: A punch missed by an inch, a kick hit a padded stuntman a little too hard. 

Appropriately enough, Tjahjanto cites one particular fight scene, a slugfest between 13 and Umbra, as the hardest shoot. “[Ribero] has to toggle this moment between intense battle with her master, [and] having this emotion that keeps elevating,” he says. “At some point it’s no longer a battle of technique. It’s more about this kept in emotion that finally explodes.” The awe he feels for his leads’ performances—their acting, as well as their commitment to the choreography—is the final punctuation mark on The Shadow Strays’ goal: Humanity first, havoc second.