I did watch The Raid 2 but not The Raid 1, so I was not entirely unprepared for the viciousness in fight scenes involving pencak silat. But still. Gareth Evans is not a horror director.
According to Wikipedia, Tjahjanto wrote The Night Comes for Us as an homage to 1980s Hong Kong gangster movies. It's probably true, given the various references to the Triad, frequent use of axes, and the Chinese (albeit in Mandarin rather than Cantonese) dialogs randomly peppered throughout the movie. However, in 2018, even Chang Cheh's or John Woo's amounts of bloodletting are no longer sufficient --- blame it on inflation.
This is the only movie that I am aware of, in which Joe Taslim and Iko Uwais not only share the screen but even fight each other. And what a fight it is. The latter half of the movie is stacked with three progressively more brutal fight scenes: Taslim's brawl in the warehouse, Julie Estelle versus two female assassins, and Taslim versus Uwais. Any of these three fight scenes is enough to be the climax for an average action movie, perhaps already excessive for an American action movie. The climax here is as eye-popping as any fight scene I have ever watched. There are many silat moves that even an ignoramus like me can appreciate. Both actors, with real chops, executed the choreography with impressive long takes and dangerous complexity. And there are numerous surprises, culminating on the stab in the ... oh I won't spoil it. Tjahjanto showed me something I have never seen before in other movies. Isn't that enough?
