The Night Comes for Us is a 2018 Indonesian martial-arts action film directed by Timo Tjahjanto. The film stars Joe Taslim in the lead role and includes fellow The Raid alumni Iko Uwais and Julie Estelle in prominent roles. The film was released worldwide through Netflix on October 19, 2018.
At the height of its power, the South East Asian Triad controls 80% of Asia's smuggling activities. Utilizing the notorious Golden Triangle as the main hub, the Triad profits heavily from illegal drugs, weapons and human trafficking. To keep the channels free from chaos and outside disturbance, the Triad leaders created a group of six elite delegates called the Six Seas, who are given free rein to use extreme measures to retain order and obedience.
One of the Six Seas, a man named Ito, has grown tired of the bloodshed. After leading a massacre against a village for stealing from the Triad, Ito chooses to betray his employers save the life of the sole survivor, a young girl named Reina, in a desperate search for redemption. Seeking help from his old friends in Jakarta, Ito sets off a violent conflict with the Triad as he seeks to secure Reina's safety.
A sequel, called Night of the Operator, is currently in development.
The Night Comes for Us contains examples of the following tropes:
- Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene: Ito and Reina bonding while sitting on the kitchen floor.
- Agony of the Feet: During the fight in the butcher shop, Ito accidentally shoots Yohan in the foot.
- Alas, Poor Villain: Arian is shown to be very conflicted over killing his former best friend and their a tone of sadness when he is gunned down for failing to stop Ito.
- Ambition Is Evil: Bobby's dealing drugs for more profit is what got Ito and Arian involved with the Triad in the first place. Arian also wanted to take the crew's criminal business to greater heights that Ito wasn't comfortable with.
- And Your Little Dog, Too!: An entire village is slaughtered simply because some of their fishermen were stealing from the Triad. Ito's refusal to kill Reina, the sole survivor of the massacre, is what kicks off the plot.
- Anti-Hero: Ito is a member of the Six Seas, an elite group of Triad enforcers known for their brutality. While he joined up with the Triads in order to protect his friends and is working to protect Reina, he is the one who led the massacre of her village in the first place. While he has become tired of killing innocents, he seems to enjoy killing his fellow Triads.
- Anti-Villain: Arian is shown to be conflicted about siding with the Triads against his former friends and struggles with his decision through the whole movie. He's also shown to be willing to stand up to higher ranking Triads in order to protect those working under him.
- Anyone Can Die: A number of prominent characters on both sides die during the course of the story. Though Ito manages to get Reina to safety, all his allies except Shinta and the Operator are dead, and his own fate is grim.
- Ax-Crazy: Alma, who cackles while spilling blood, and Elena, who displays a sociopathic lack of emotions.
- Badass and Child Duo: Ito and Reina. Unlike other examples, Ito tends to stash Reina somewhere safe while he goes and gets stuff done.
- Badass Biker: The Operator gets around on a motorcycle.
- Badass Boast: Ito gives an awesome one before taking on the goons in the compound.Ito: If you know who I am, then know you're about to die at the hands of a Six Seas. If so... have at me!
- Badass Crew: Ito was the leader of one before joining the Triad. While Ito is the best of them, Arian, Fatih and Bobby are all shown to be formidable fighters.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: Arian wears a suit through most of the movie, including his fight with Ito. Ito makes him regret the tie.
- Bad Boss: Chien Wu, who happily has his underlings killed when they fail him.
- Subverted with Arian, whose Establishing Character Moment shows him killing some other gangsters (and risking serious repercussions) because they abused a waitress at the club he runs.
- Bait-and-Switch: It looks like Ito kills the little girl in the opening scene, but in the next scene we find the girl alive and Ito with a bullet wound. He shot the rest of her attackers.
- Big Bad: Chien Wu, a member of the Six Seas in charge of hunting down Ito and Reina.
- The Big Guy: Bobby is the big, strong, emotional member of Ito's crew.
- Bittersweet Ending: Reina is safely spirited out of Indonesia, but at the cost of the lives of most of Ito's friends. Ito is alive at the end, but his situation is grim.
- Blood Knight: Ito is implied to be this. Bobby accuses him of "getting high off murder" and he shows a disturbing amount of elation at fighting and killing Triad members in the film's climax.
- Bolivian Army Ending: The film ends with Ito driving a car at a group of Triads, including Chien Wu, as they open fire on him.
- Brutal Honesty: The Operator bluntly tells Ito that Reina has a better chance of survival away from him than with him, citing his dead friends as evidence. Ito doesn't appreciate her lack of tact but he admits she is right.
- Bulletproof Vest: Bobby manages to improvise one by hiding a metal plate underneath his sweatshirt.
- Car Fu: Fatih manages to run over one of the Triad thugs with his car in his attempt to escape the parking garage with Reina.
- Chekhov's Gun:
- The metal slippery floor sign used as an improvised armor by Bobby is shown in an earlier scene.
- During Ito’s fight with the Operative, he throws her into a window air conditioner, and then loosens it when she dodges his kick. This same air conditioner is used by the Operative later to kill Alma, when she wraps Alma’s garrote around it before kicking it free.
- Clothing Combat: Arian uses his jacket to blind Alma in his fight with her.
- Co-Dragons: Alma and Elena, Chien Wu's assassins.
- Comfort the Dying: Subverted by Elena, who says that she won't help the dying Alma because "You can't help what's already dead."
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Main characters have just as hard a time against a room full of mooks as they do a single other lead character. However, the trope is perhaps most obvious in the Operator's fight with Elena and Alma. The Operator has just as much trouble fighting Elena alone as she does both of them together.
- Coup de Grâce: Ito withholds a killing blow to Arian because, "You can't kill what's already dead."
- Creator Provincialism: The film is an Indonesian movie where Indonesians kill evil Chinese Triads.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- Elena manages to effortlessly kill Bobby.
- Arian knocks out Alma in about ten seconds.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: The Operator kills Alma by wrapping one end of her own garrote around her neck, attaching the other end to an air conditioner and kicking the air conditioner out the window.
- Dark Action Girl: All three of the female main characters. The Operator is a little nicer in that she comes to have some investment in Reina's safety, but she's really only on Ito's side because she wants the Triads dead.
- Designated Girl Fight: It's the Operator who takes down Elena and Alma.
- Destination Defenestration: During the fight in the apartment, Bobby manages to throw a Mook out of one of the windows.
- Determinator:
- Ito spends the entire length of the movie with a still healing gunshot wound to the stomach, and suffers more injuries along the way, but he pushes through all his injuries in order to keep Reina safe.
- Elena's guts are spilling out of her abdomen and all she can do his hold a hand over them to keep them in place, but she still keeps coming at the end of her fight with the Operator.
- Dirty Cop: A group of these capture Ito and kill Yohan after the fight in the butcher shop.
- Dirty Coward: In a movie where everyone is an ass-kicking badass, Yohan is one of the few people in the movie with zero combat skills. He prefers his seven butchers to kill Ito for him while he hides in his office and calls for backup. Contrast with Wisnu, who isn't a great fighter either and is clearly terrified, but does his best.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Subverted. Elena shrugs off Alma's death, saying that the dying are not worth saving.
- Fashionable Asymmetry:
- The Operator's Spy Catsuit only has one sleeve.
- Elena has one side of her hair head trimmed down to stubble.
- Fingore:
- After the Operator manages to wrap Alma's own garrote around her throat, Alma manages to interpose her hand, which only leads to her fingers being sliced off.
- Not long afterward, a kukri swing from Elena gives the Operator a deep gash on one of her fingers, which she then yanks off.
- Getting High on Their Own Supply:
- What happened with Bobby, who started out selling drugs for the Triad but is nothing more than a junkie by the time Ito meets him again.
- Yohan, who took the drug dealing business away from Bobby, is shown getting high off his own drugs as well.
- Gorn: Makes even The Raid movies look
tame! - Gratuitous English: Chien Wu and Arian primarily speak English to each other, presumably because they each know it better than the other's native tongue.
- Gratuitous French: The Operator switches to French when fighting Elena to show that she knows of her background (and to take advantage of both their actresses being half French).
- Greater-Scope Villain: The Operator mentions someone called the Old Tiger, whom the Six Seas report to. Presumably, it was he who ordered Reina's village massacred, and sent Chien Wu after Ito.
- Guns Do Not Work That Way: It becomes clear pretty quickly that the filmmakers had little idea how guns actually worked when making the movie. When a gangster does a Dramatic Gun Cock before shooting Bobby, the bolt is heard opening and closing, despite the Uzi firing from an open bolt (meaning once it's pulled back, it's ready to fire and doesn't go forward until the trigger is pulled. In addition, several characters are shown racking the slides on handguns far too easily, showing that they are props with weak springs, and when "fired" the actors over-exaggerate the recoil that a pistol would actually have. About the only gun that is shown being worked properly is the Operator's MP7A1.
- Gutted Like a Fish: Happens to Elena at the end of her fight with the Operator. She ''still'' keeps coming.
- Handicapped Badass: Bobby is missing one of his legs below the knee, but this doesn't stop him from beating down a bunch of Triad goons. He's a bit of Mighty Glacier as a result.
- The Heavy: Arian.
- Heel–Face Door-Slam: During the attack on the building, Arian has a prick of conscience and chooses to help his former friends, saving Fatih and Reina from Alma. Unfortunately, Fatih deduces that it was Arian who told Yohan and the Triad where he lived and refuses any further help from him, blaming him for Bobby and Wisnu's deaths. As a result, Arian remains with the Triad all the way to end of the film.
- Hell-Bent for Leather: The Operator wears a leather jacket over her Spy Catsuit. Justified in that her main source of transportation is a motorcycle.
- Hero Stole My Bike: Ito steals a pedestrian's car to get to the apartment building where his friends are under fire from the Triad.
- Hidden Weapons: Elena keeps a knife hidden in her belt buckle.
- Hitman with a Heart: Both Ito and Arian qualify.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Operator ends up killing Alma with her own Razor Floss.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The Operator finally kills Elena by impaling her through the neck.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Wisnu is handed an Uzi and told to watch over Reina. When thugs break into the room, he unloads on full auto about ten feet from the door, and only manages one or two superficial hits to one of the mooks' legs.
- Improvised Armor: Ito tears a phone book in to chunks and duct tapes the pieces to his shirt under his jacket, which cushion a lot of the blows from Arian's thugs.
- Improvised Weapon: Ito uses the pocket net from a billiards table with a few billiard balls in it as a club at one point.
- It's Personal with the Dragon: The movie's main emotional weight rests on the relationship between Ito and his former protege, Arian, who is now the top enforcer for the movie's main villain, Chien Wu.
- Knife Fight: One occurs between the Operator and Elena.
- Kukris Are Kool: Elena wields a kukri to devastating effect.
- Lack of Empathy: Chien Wu shows no compassion to Arian who is clearly conflicted about having to kill his former friends. Alma outright laughs at Fatih when he slips in his dead cousin's blood and Elena shows no grief over Alma's death at the hands of the Operator.
- Laser Sight: The Operator's submachine gun is equipped with one.
- Made of Iron
- Ito starts the movie injured and only goes downhill from there, but he's able to take an insane amount of damage and keep going. By the end of the movie, he's been cut, stabbed, and beaten enough times to kill most people, but somehow stays on his feet until the end.
- Arian gets his throat stabbed in his fight against Ito and is somehow still able to keep talking afterwards.
- Bobby and Fatih are also able to keep going after being stabbed and slashed a number of times.
- Wisnu gets stabbed in the chest and manages to kill his attacker with his own knife.
- Mauve Shirt: Wisnu, Fatih's cousin. He's not focused on much and doesn't have the connection to Ito that Fatih and Bobby do, but he protects Reina for most of the apartment fight and is given enough characterization that his death at Alma's hand is tragic.
- Mook Chivalry:
- The guys in Arian's compound only attack Ito a few at a time. You can even see some of them waiting for their turn as Ito is fighting.
- Evident during the fight between the Operator, and Alma and Elena. The scene largely cuts around it by trying not to keep both Alma and Elena on-screen together while the Operative is fighting them, but nonetheless there are several stretches where it's obvious one or the other is simply standing and waiting for their turn to attack. Especially a quite long shot where we see Alma standing behind the Operator posing with her garotte while the Operator is in a Blade Lock with Elena.
- Non-Action Big Bad: Chien Wu, despite being a member of the notorious Six Seas, never directly fights anyone, having his hordes of lackeys do his work for him. It's possible he has no combat skills whatsoever (although his actor definitely does).
- No Name Given: The Operator is only listed as such in the credits. She's never referred to by any name in the film.
- The Notable Numeral: The Six Seas. The Lotuses also have a numeric rank system, although it's not established how many there are.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Bobby draws a switchblade on two bad guys in an elevator. Cut to him stepping out the elevator, covered in blood.
- Offscreen Teleportation: The Operator pulls this on Ito as he has his head down while sitting in front of him.
- Oh, Crap!: Ito's reaction when Johan mentions his seven butchers and Ito realizes he can only see four of them.
- One-Man Army: Ito manages to defeat all of Yohan's butchers and all the Triad men guarding the warehouse by himself.
- Psycho Knife Nut: Bobby's weapon of choice is a switchblade and enjoys fighting with it maybe a bit too much. The kukri-wielding Elena is also of dubious sanity, though she's the more stoic, emotionless kind of crazy.
- Psycho Lesbian: Alma and Elena are directly referred as such at one point in the film.
- Rasputinian Death: At the end of the apartment fight against the Operator, Elena gets Gutted Like a Fish, has her right arm snapped, then impaled, then slashed in two from elbow to wrist, has her spilled entrails slashed apart, and is finally impaled through the neck. Justified because even after having her belly laid open she keeps coming.
- Razor Floss: A more realistic example than most. Alma wields a weighted garrote, and considering how easily it can be pulled through flesh and bone, it appears to be a homemade Gigli saw
. - Sacrificial Lion: Fatih and Bobby.
- Sinister Shades: Chien Wu sports these.
- Smug Snake: Arian gets very smug and cocky at the start of his fight with Ito. However, it doesn't take long for Ito to wipe the smirk off his face. Yohan also acts like this when Ito comes to his place only for Ito to show him who is truly the more dangerous of the two.
- Special Effect Failure: When Bobby is slammed against the apartment window, it begins to crack like a normal glass window, but then shatters like a car window, showing it to be safety glass.
- When the Operator makes herself known by killing four mooks right before they finish off a mortally wounded Fatih, the last one drops dead at least a few seconds before the laser sight is even trained on him. Even more egregiously, the muzzle flashes only come well after the shots have already been fired.
- Spiritual Successor: To The Raid and The Raid 2: Berandal. All of them are ultra-violent Indonesian action films with fairly lean plots that primarily exist to serve as excuses for the fight scenes, and share many of the same actors. Timo Tjahjanto and Gareth Evans even worked with each other in the past.
- The Spook: The Operator. All that is known for sure is she on a mission to eliminate the Six Seas, but for what purpose is never stated. Her title, demeanor and equipment imply she's a government agent of some kind, but which government, if any, she works for is never so much as hinted at.
- Spy Catsuit: The Operator wear's one along with a leather jacket.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: At one point, the Operator is holding Ito at gunpoint and makes him explain his motivations. He looks away for a moment and when he looks back, the Operator has completely disappeared from the apartment they're in.
- The Stoic:
- The Operator sports a calm, professional demeanor at all times, even when forced to pull her own finger off.
- Elena, in stark contrast to her partner, Alma, barely shows any emotion through the course of the film.
- Taking You with Me: Despite having been shot multiple times and surrounded by Triad gunmen, Fatih manages to raise his pistol and kill at least one of them before he's gunned down.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill:
- Arian is killed by six Triads empty entire clips from their automatic weapons into him before one finishes him off with a headshot from a pistol.
- At the end of her fight with the Operator, Elena is Gutted Like a Fish, keeps fighting with her guts hanging out, then has her arm snapped, stabbed, and slashed in two from the elbow to the wrist, has her spilled guts slashed apart, and is finally impaled through the neck.
- Token White: Bobby is nicknamed Bobby Bule ("White Boy Bobby") and Elena is French. Bobby appears to be mixed-race, and most western viewers wouldn't necessarily register him as white, but the other characters frequently refer to him as such.
- The Triads and the Tongs: The Triads are the major antagonistic force of the film. Virtually all the characters have involvement with the organization in one way or another.
- Two Lines, No Waiting: The first half of the movie is split between Ito recruiting his old friends to help get Reina out of the country and Arian getting recruited by Chien Wu to kill Ito. This is then followed by Ito assaulting Yohan's butcher shop while his friends fight off the Triad at the apartment.
- Would Hurt a Child: Everyone working for the Triad, as their ultimate goal is Reina's death.
- You Have Failed Me: Chien Wu has Arian gunned down after he fails to kill Ito.
