Film Review: The Shadow Strays [Toronto Film Festival]

By Dolores Quintana

Indonesian action Timo Tjahjanto has reached new heights with his latest opus, The Shadow Strays. You can find the film on Netflix, where it is now available for streaming, so you can watch it in the safety and comfort of your own home, but I have seen it on the big screen at The Toronto Film Festival and it was wondrous to behold. 

Here is the synopsis: After nearly botching a mission, Codename 13, a prodigal assassin found herself suspended from further duties. The killer teen meets Monji, a young boy who lost his mother to a crime syndicate. When Monji disappeared, 13 turned on setting a path of destruction to find her only friend… even at the cost of defying her mentor and the organization she belongs to; The Shadows.

You can watch the film’s trailer here:

I have watched with excitement as Tjahjanto has flexed his talents in both the horror and action genres and with each film, his grasp on his talent seems to get even more powerful. With The Shadow Strays, he has become an auteur of the spurting vein and the bruised heart. He is a force to be reckoned with, especially within the action genre, as his latest film proves. 

The action sequences in the film are exquisite. The martial arts employed are visceral. You feel the force of punches and kicks and the choreography isn’t so fast that you can’t see what is happening. It’s very clean and very easy for the human eye to follow, yet done with amazing skill and speed. It’s thrilling with breathless excitement and very watchable, not confusing to the eye at all. 

The Shadow Strays stars Aurora Ribero as 13, a very young assassin who has what might be considered a flaw for someone in that vocation –  a conscience, Hana Malasan stars as Umbra, her trainer and mentor. As “Shadows of Death”, especially as seen in the opening scene set in Japan, they literally are shadows. Dressed from head to toe in black metal armor, they look like an x-ray image of the human form. When they take off their masks, their eyes burn with a dark fire. There’s a palpable force that emanates from their menace. It’s something that I have seen before with people who have come from childhood hardship and abuse. It’s an anger that can slap you in the face and make the person from which it emanates a naked flame of violence. They are the shadow selves of their erstwhile human form. 

Ali Fikry plays Monji, Adipati Dolken plays Prasetyo, Andri Mashadi plays Ariel, Kristo Immanuel plays Jeki, and Taskya Namya plays Soriah. All of them achieve memorable and moving work. 

In the opening sequence which seems like a witty pastiche of the House of Blue Leaves scene from Kill Bill, these two assassins are pitted against a roomful of men with guns, facing them only with blades. It is beautiful to watch the carnage and there’s plenty of that in the scene. He even uses heat vision to great effect and uses innovative camera angles to shock the viewer to new heights. 

But Tjahjanto is not content with action, and one of his greatest assets as an action and horror director is his ability and his willingness to invest in creating characters that are wonderfully likable, flawed, charismatic, fun, and evil. His strength is imbuing what could be two-dimensional characters with complex motivations, deep emotions, and humor, and casting the best actors to embody these characters.  

You will never leave a Tjahjanto gun battle or bloodbath unscathed emotionally. 
The Shadow Strays is an action flick that is a cut above others. Timo Tjahjanto is a force to be reckoned with and only seems to gain power with each new film. His ingenious style and voracious need to give the viewer more with each new scene results in a film so incredible that repeat viewings are necessary to process it. Martial arts mayhem with a blazing intelligence and a heart pumping pure cinematic bliss into our veins.