Review of selected filmography of director Timo Tjahjanto from Oleg Chernenko

28.02.2024TonychTG

Indonesia has never been famous for its cinema, despite its large population and at least a developed economy. There are many reasons for this: the fact that this is a former Dutch colony, so cinema began to develop relatively late; and the fact that for a long time the country had, so to speak, an authoritarian regime with all the side effects in the form of censorship. And, perhaps, many more things: lack of specialists, weak government support, etc.

But cinema was there in the 80s, they even invested heavily in it, making a lot of genre films, in particular horror films, action films and films about martial arts. They even had their own action stars: Barry Prima, Advent Bangun... Another thing is that the quality of all those films left much to be desired, or rather, it was even “so bad that it’s good.” There is a fantastic action movie "Lady Terminator" (1989) - pure tracing paper, in fact, from the first "Terminator" (1984) only with the most fanservice-heavy steal as a nearly invincible mega-assassin. This craft looks incredibly creepy, but has the peculiar charm of an exploitation movie.

But a new round of popularity for action films, in particular martial arts films from Indonesia, happened thanks to one Welsh boy - Gareth Evans. Evans filmed documentaries about pencak silat for TV in this Southeast Asian country, but was simply a wild fan of Asian massacre films (and cinema in general), so he managed to realize his ambitions and find funding by filming "Merantau" (2009) and duology "Raid" (2011, 2014), thanks to which he became famous.

It would be strange if the commercial success of these films (made, moreover, with a budget like a sack of potatoes) did not encourage Indonesians to try to develop this topic. To tell the truth, get closer to "Raids" no one could, but the boys, directors and screenwriters came closest to success Timo Tiajanto и Kimo Stambol - creative duet. Timo and Kimo initially shot bloody low-budget horror films, that is, films in a genre that did not require serious financial expenditure, but then, apparently in the wake of the success of Evans’ projects, they bungled an action movie Headshot (2016) with growing popularity Iko Uwaisom. Then Kimo broke away, continuing to rip out his stupid horror films, and Timo decided to take action films seriously. Actually, they will be analyzed specifically - I will not touch his horror films, although some of them contained a certain amount of conventional action.

First, I will note the general features characteristic of his work.

• “Good old-fashioned ultraviolence,” as one character in Kubrick’s cult film liked to say. There is not just a lot of cruelty in Tjahjanto's films, but too much. Both in action films and horror films. It feels like the director spends all his free time watching real murder scenes on sites like liveleak. Mountains of corpses, oceans of blood, a bunch of extremely sophisticated murders. At the same time, if some Tarantino’s tin is aestheticized to the maximum, so that it is perceived rather as grotesque, as in a comic book, and in Korean films, although there is a lot of violence, it is shown without relish, then with Timo everything looks like it was done at the same time with some kind of a serious overkill, but at the same time realistically vile. Here everyone decides for themselves whether this is a plus or not.

• Along with the violence comes a very strange, depressive, dark atmosphere. Not the aesthetic gloom of old American noirs and not the sad gloom of Korean films, but a certain oppressive, blackening gloom that permeates everything, the entrances pissed off by drunks with a touch of some strange devilishness. I can’t list it as a plus, given the following nuance...

• The extreme wretchedness of the plots, bad dialogues, the terrible cliché of everything and everyone. IN PRINCIPLE this is the norm in Indonesian cinema (at least in the mainstream), but this does not justify the author.

• Let's add a plus - overall excellent action. Among the gloomy, boring atmosphere of Tjahjanto's films with bad dialogues, etc., suddenly there are well-choreographed and intense fight scenes. They are inventive and, what I personally like, the characters in them are usually very vulnerable. With all the cool atmosphere of danger in the first and second "Reide", I couldn’t help but notice that the main character Rama is practically invincible in battle with ordinary enemies. Maximum - gets a scratch on the face. Only bosses or mini-bosses can cause serious harm. In Timo's films, the main character can have a VERY hard time even in a fight with a random mob. And it would be really cool if I empathized with the hero, which is difficult to do if he is a poorly written piece of cardboard, alas.

The production, at the same time, I repeat, is high-quality and thoughtful. If he made films based on other people's scripts, it would be much better. But as for the shootings, it’s much worse. Firstly, there is a LOT of naughtiness in Tjahjanto’s films. But the bad thing is that it looks as bad as possible. In a computer game Max Payne In 2001, all the effects of both shots and hits were made cooler, it’s a shame, the vomiting yellow or beige flashes from weapon fire, the same crappy and seemingly blurry hit effects...

At the same time, there is a strange contrast... If in "Reide" the fights were more choreographic, that is, you look and “wow, cool!”, but at the same time you don’t feel them as a real fight, but rather as well-staged choreographic scenes, while Timo’s fights are similar to fights - they are perceived relatively realistically. And the shootings are EXACTLY the opposite - completely surreal... I don’t even want to talk about endless cartridges, after all John Woo we love everything, but in Tjahjanto’s masterpieces, in general, all shooting scenes are brought to some kind of grotesque idiocy. And in contrast to good fights, they are perceived as even more ridiculous. For the sake of UNIVERSAL justice - Evans’s shootouts were also not brilliant and also drawn... Well, the light bulbs still blinked. But the overall drive, successful production with a sharp transition from suspense to action (about the same thing happened in his series "Gangs of London"), as well as the secondary importance of shooting in relation to fights, makes up for this. Timo has a lot of shooting without any sense. Now for individual films.

Headshot (in Russian box office "Raid: Bullet in the Head") (2016)

Our film was translated as "Raid: Bullet in the Head" (it’s strange that it’s not "Raid: Anabolics" or "Raid: Bratva"). Timo's first attempt at writing is still in tandem with Kimo. Well what can I say? There was a review from Ravenside (read here) for this film, with which I agree. All the director's signature stamps are evident here.

The only thing is that in the final fight they managed to lose even a slight advantage. It is staged very stupidly, plus the dramaturgy is a failure, because from the crap that happened before, you get tired, and you don’t want to root for the hero at all.

The night follows us (2018)

The same eggs, only ostrich. The film is long, but not as long as "Headshot" and the final fight is just wow: it’s clear that they’ve seriously messed around here. The dramaturgy was also a failure, but it was delivered from the heart. Instead of Yuvays they made a hero Joe Taslima, and Iko was appointed as the final boss. Taslim, as a basic judoka (and a very high level one at that - a member of the national team) actively uses wrestling, while Yuwais is more of a striker, but as the fight progresses, both, for the sake of victory, begin to use everything that comes to hand - staged and shot cool. Despite the fact that I never empathized with the two fighting assholes, the fight was a success.

Z/L/R 94 (2021)

This is part of a series of horror films, where each film is an anthology consisting of several short stories. Unlike other parts (they are generally smelly shit), here two episodes are filled with action. The best of them is the last one, where a group of far-right American "militia" used the blood of a vampire to create a bomb: it is original, creepy, and the action is cool.

And Tjahjanto made another - the second in the film, which I liked relatively, but was far from good. There are no martial arts in it, only shooting (which, even compared to the director’s other films, is disgustingly drawn), but everything is shot like a first-person shooter - reminiscent of Hollywood Doom (2005), including a certain devilish atmosphere, despite the fact that there is nothing supernatural in it. It also somewhat reminded me of the work of a Japanese director Shinyi Tsukamoto with its terrible combination of soulless technology and human flesh, if it had not been filmed so “to get rid of it,” it could have turned out frightening and atmospheric. But here I’ll rather praise it, especially considering that the rest of the short stories besides those mentioned are complete slag.

Big Four (2022)

AND HERE IT IS! It seems that the exception to the rule is an action comedy, where there are no certain directorial tricks that infuriated me. Was it supposed to be a masterpiece? Uff...

To begin with, in the lion's share of Asian films, humor is based not on all sorts of “subtle” dialogue gags, but on hellish antics. Does such an approach have a right to exist? Well, the main thing is that it’s funny, but that’s the problem. It's only funny in Hong Kong cinema. The Thais make faces ten times more desperate, but every time it’s some kind of nightmare. Maybe the locals come in, I don’t know... It’s not for nothing that in a bunch of films with Tony Jaa there is the same actor with an unpronounceable last name, who all the time in the frame behaves like a complete idiot, making such grimaces with his not very smart face that you want to vomit on your own shoes. It's probably cool for the Thais.

So here it’s the same thing, the acting is the most unfunny clownery, so terrible that it’s difficult to watch the film. Then I thought that I was probably in vain criticizing the gloom of Timon and Pumbah... and Kimo - anything is better than THIS. The director’s “sense of humor” manifested itself even in the smallest things: in the final fight with the villain, one of the heroines dips his mug into the toilet, where you can clearly see the poop floating. Well, the director decided that it was cool, apparently bought rubber shit from the nearest joke shop and pinned it on the set - well, it’s awesome. I don’t argue, at 15 I would have gotten the hang of it. Everything else is high-quality action, scary girls, degenerate heroes, meaningless dialogues.

Well, in general? The director produces excellent action scenes, if other people wrote the script for his films, and also allocated a decent budget so as not to see these goggle-eyed shooting effects, it would work. And so - alas.

Oleg MapintasBangis Chernenko

Especially for fight-films.info

Home » Reviews » Review of selected filmography of director Timo Tjahjanto from Oleg Chernenko
Tags: Headshot, The Big 4, The Night Comes for Us, Joe Taslim, Iko Uwais, Kimo Stambol, Timo Tiajanto

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