Dodge This: Action Movies Unleashed
Simon Feilder and Matthew Highton are British comedians separated by a sea but united by their love of action movies. Join them for a celebration of the latest and (hopefully) greatest in action cinema from around the world, from big budget bombastic bonanzas to down & dirty DTV darlings.
Dodge This: Action Movies Unleashed
THE SHADOW STRAYS (Indonesia, 2024) with Emil Struijker Boudier
Undercover Dutchman Emil Struijker Boudier returns to the fray to dissect Indonesian gore-fest actioner 'The Shadows Strays' written and directed by Timo Tjahjanto and starring Aurora Ribero
>>> THE SHADOW STRAYS trailer <<<
There's a few column inches for The Wild Robot, The Substance, Will & Harper and a bit too much wrestling & Assassin's Creed depending on who you ask...
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Wow. Typical game. the art of fighting without fighting. Stick around. Always trying to escape a mill. Dodge this. Hello, friends, lovers, countrymen. I think I've mangled the phrase, but whatever it is. Welcome. It's Dodge This, action movies unleashed. We're into season four and Christmas is in the air, depending on when you're listening to this. If you're listening to this in February 2025, could not be less relevant. I mean the, that sentence, not the content, which is quote unquote, evergreen. If you love movies, we're talking about Timo Chayanto's, I'm not a hundred percent sure on the pronunciation of the surname Chayanto, Chajanto, Chayanto's The Shadow Strays. It's a Netflix exclusive. It's Timo who made some horror movies. The night comes for us. There will be blood. He didn't make that movie, but you can expect blood in his movies, and this one does not disappoint in that regard. We'll get to that soon. Before we do though, without further ado, let's welcome back the, I want to say like, the reigning Trump. I don't know why I wanted to go all wrestling. Because we just talked about wrestling. Yeah, it's in my head now. Surprisingly. He's... I, oh, hello, I'm Simon Fielder. And if this is your first time here, I'm a British, a human man currently located in Mumbai, India. Prior to now, I was located in Amsterdam, the Netherlands and before that London, England, when I was in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, this man was my friend and that friendship terminated the minute I left. However. However, he loves movies and once in a while, I like to chat to him about them while other people listen. His name, god, this intro is too long, is Emil Sprauker-Boudier. Woo! I try to be silent until I'm introduced, but then your introduction went all over the place and I couldn't help myself. Hi, my name is Emil. I live in Harlem, close to Amsterdam. I was born in Utrecht, grew up in Almere. I'm just doing this so Simon doesn't feel so bad about his long intro. Thank you very much. Even, even, even Stevens. Your pronunciation of those towns belies the fact that you are in fact Dutch. That I'm in fact Dutch, yeah. And also, friendship terminated is harsh. It's just online friendships are tricky. So you just don't talk to each other that much. At least I don't. In fairness. I should use the option of FaceTime more and shit. No, I know. But I just always do like... I'm interrupting somebody's life. It's true. And that's why no one ever phones each other anymore. And I feel like I don't want to speak for all men, but my girlfriend and her friends love to send each other voice notes of, you know, varying lengths of time, but they'll happily send a 10 minute voice note. And I just don't know any guys who do that. Please, if there are any out there, correct me if I'm wrong. If this, if I'm, if I'm just old, that's also fine. But I'm not against it, to be fair. I wouldn't mind it. It just always feels like, oh, I'm doing this now. Okay, here we go. I don't know, I put too much pressure on it to be interesting and not roughly like this bullshit. I think we're very similar in that sense. Cause if I do a voice memo, usually four takes. Exactly. Exactly. Like, oh, this was, I didn't need to say that at all. What is like, but that happens in regular conversation, but for some reason, because that's also how I write my text messages. But maybe I'll keep it in the back of my head. Maybe I'll try it with you when I was just randomly like, Hey, let's maybe think of you or like, Hey, this might be of interest to you. Here's, here's a voice message. Exactly. I feel like that's how most male friendships are, is just literally like, we haven't spoken or seen each other for six months and then like just forward you something on Instagram and be like, look at this. And then you just double tap it hard. That's it for another six months. That's all you need as a male friendship in a nutshell. I will also say, at least with, I think all of my male friends, it does go very quickly of like, Oh, well, when we see each other or talk to each other, it's right back to where it was. Like there's no, oh, we haven't seen each other in a while. This is awkward. It's like, no, we're back at it. That's fine. There's people who, you know, I left the UK to move to Amsterdam over five years, six years ago now. Shit. Oh my God. Yeah. There's probably people I haven't seen since then who like, I thought I was friends with and you're just like, oh, well, you know, once in a while, just, just do the little, you know, Instagram back and forth. Like at least I've seen you this year. There's people who I saw regularly and then haven't seen now for six years. I guess, I guess those are, if you worked in an office, people who would be colleagues, but if you like working sort of the performing arts and creative industry, you can just go years without seeing people anyway. God, what a way around the houses. What is this? A waffle house? Cause we're waffling baby. He's back. He is back. Get it going. Last time you were here, which was a while back, we talked about Tiger 3 with our friend Nervy. We did! Since then, she came to Mumbai, and I did not see her. She arrived in Mumbai the day I left to go somewhere else. That's why friendships are so hard. So hard. Oh boy, anyway. And then you need to think about yourself, according to all self-care books as well. Like you first and then other people. And like, oh boy. It's a, you know what? It's a balance. Sure, every day is a, take time for yourself. Unless you're a self-employed performer, in which case you have a lot of time on your own. You can worry about your next page. Hey, anyway, since Tiger 3, have you looked at, seen, enjoyed anything? Anything? Anything. It's hard with the current state of the world. My God. This is as a quick side note on the state of the world, I, cause I felt like maybe this is just growing up and I'm more aware of it or the world has always been kind of fucked and I've just now I'm noticing it more anyway. To balance that, I would like to talk about the last movie I saw in the cinema, which was the Wild Robot. the animation movie. Okay, nothing about this apart from I've heard of it. Yeah, it's a DreamWorks? Yes, it's a DreamWorks movie. And it's wonderful. It's so sweet. It's just, it's a movie about kindness and how that is how the world is supposed to work. So there's a robot who gets dropped in an island full of animals. And all the animals hate the robot at first because it's an outsider and they don't know what to do with it. And then when winter comes, they figure, Actually, if we all are kind to each other for a little bit, we can actually survive this winter. That's a part of it. There's a whole lot more to it, but it's very sweet. So if after this podcast, or even if you watch the movie, we're going to talk about, you need a little pick me up. The wild robot is, is tear inducing. It's very sweet and lovely. My tear ducts can't handle those kinds of things, but I do love to watch them. And I will add it to my list. And that actually. exactly segs in and reminds me that I recently watched Will and Harper. I don't know if you've seen that. Oh yes. Oh, go watch that. That's another movie that just made me, you know, sort of happy and kindness and also like, yeah, just, oh, just, you just, you just have to try to understand. You don't have to understand, but you just have to accept. Yeah. And like people fear things they don't understand. That's the very top line message I took from that movie. Yeah. It's very nice. Yeah. And there's, there's a very weird thing to me where a part of that audience who, oh, this scares me because I don't know it are also like, just leave me alone, but they don't apply that to other people for some reason. It's like, yeah, that's how it works. Then you just leave them alone. You don't have to interact with everybody. It's impossible. There's way too many people on this planet. It's fine. Right. You don't need to be friends with everybody. You don't need to agree with everybody. But as long as they're not physically or mentally torturing you or hurting you, it's fine. I could care less what somebody does in their bedroom. Like I'm not there. And if it's consensual, hello. This is a really healthy start to this podcast, I think. I think this is good balance for where we're headed. It's been so gloomy here in the Netherlands. It's just weather wise. It's the winter in the Netherlands. It's never the winter in Mumbai. I mean, technically at some point it is, but it's 28 degrees outside and it's 8.30 at night. So I didn't think what it is in the Netherlands. But the other day I was swiping like on the weather app and it was like, oh, five degrees there. I'm going to feel that when I get off the plane at Christmas. For sure. It's not cloudy. It's cloud. That's what it is. It's the cloud season. Anything else? What else is? tickled your, tickled your boat. I like to. Recently been very busy at Boom Chicago with all of the election shows, regular shows and well, we had a wrestling event. That's why we're talking about wrestling. Yeah. Cause that made me very happy and also such a good example of, you don't, you don't need to hate it, but boy, if you're there live, everybody had a good time, everybody had a great time. Some things are just better live. And obviously like, I want to, a sports event, sports entertainment. Yeah, but even live sports events. It's that's what the WWE is calling it. It's called sports entertainment. That's a whole, whole thing. That's a whole different podcast. I don't want to wait into any. But, but it's pretty big in India, as I understand wrestling. And I understand why after watching Bollywood movies, like the way they tell stories visually is very similar to wrestling in a lot of aspects at its best. Yeah. Hey, um, here's two other things. I've seen of note one, a movie you might've heard of fresh, fresh off the movie press called Slumdog Millionaire thought it's finally getting around to that movie. To be fair, I've not watched it. I hadn't and it's, you know, set in Mumbai and I've now, I only watch Indian movies where Mumbai is portrayed very badly now that I live here. It's like. I moved to London and I just watched Top Boy and Guy Ritchie movies. And no, I don't watch Four Weddings or Notting Hill. That's me with Mumbai. Nonetheless, Dev Patel, very good. Very good movie. Danny Boyle. He can direct a bloody movie, that guy. I mean, I've only ever heard good things about it. Yeah. I don't know why I never got around to it. And then at some point you just kind of go- It's just Joan. I've never seen Citizen Kane either. That was like when I was- brought up was like, oh, that's such a great movie. And I'm like, at a certain point I was like, yeah, there's no way I can watch all the movies. Everybody thinks something is genuinely important. You're not going to get around to all of them. But nonetheless, Slumdog Millionaire, good. And one that is relevant and recent. And I think in the last episode, I talked to Chris about a movie called It's What's Inside, which was on Netflix, a sort of high concept. horror sci-fi. And there was a few movies, I'm repeating myself, but there was a few movies recently that had this kind of like, um, oh my goodness, check out this, you know, up and coming director with this crazy mind blowing movie. And none of them really like measured up, which is to say that I watched a movie called The Substance. Don't know if you've heard of it. Oh, yes. Not sorry to me more, which I'd heard a lot of this movie is mind blowing, going, knowing nothing about. And I was like, okay, but like, you know. also watched long legs and it's what's inside and strange darling and they've all kind of left me a bit meh. Anyway, the substance is absolutely fucking mental. Loved it. Big recommend. Absolutely bonkers. Um, yeah. Really, really good. I don't want to say anything more about it apart from just like, yeah, it's, it's worth a watch. You'll have an opinion on it one way or the other. And I was like, it's one of those movies where there was so much potential, then it sort of fails to deliver on it really in the end. And then it's sort of fine. When it started out I was like, oh this could be really good. And oh my god. And the longer it went on the more it just kind of turned into a genre horror movie. And then Nick Cage... It's enjoyable, but... He caged it right up. Caged it right up. He went full cage in that movie. And that sounds big recommended. Yeah, I mean, your mileage may be, it depends how much you love cage cages. 100%. Speaking of going full cage or dialing it up to 11 or other sort of, you know, local radio style segues. You're doing it. Emil. Yes. Would you like to head through to the... Whatever arena you watch movies on a TV slash laptop, wherever your Netflix is, wherever your Netflix is, right? Okay. Yes. Couldn't watch this in the cinema. Didn't have the facility. Don't think it got really a wide release. I watched it in my house on a TV. Yep. I'm old. I watch things on a TV. That's how I do it. We don't need to leave the house. Come with me. Sit on my sofa. Let's watch a movie on my TV. Don't touch all my... Now, our feature presentation. Dodge this. All right, we are talking about the Shadow Strays, Timo Chianto. He's directed, well, he's directed actually more stuff than I've seen, but then that sounds insane. But in my head, he's the guy who directed The Night Comes For Us and The Big Four, which and Matt talked about on this show a while back, but he's actually directed more horror movies that I haven't seen because I'm not really sort of in the horror world. It's not called Ghost This. Stab This. I don't know. I don't feel like I'm really firing on a lot of cylinders today. Dreadful radio. It's what podcasts used to be called. Sit in a closet and breathe heavily while the killer walks through the raw room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I watch about two horror films a year. So most of his horror output has passed me by. However, Likes of the Night comes for us. Thought the big four was okay. Heard a lot of people in the action world losing their minds about this one. So I was excited to see it. Emil Cheese, would you like to do the old plot sum up? Okay. So Ho! Young Assassin slightly fails at one of her missions, gets sent back to get sort of retrained psychologically, but has a lot of doubts of why she's doing this, gets overly attached to a young boy who loses his mother, goes on a revenge mission. Eventually everything catches up to her and she sort of wins in the end by being free, but not really. I think that's the most spoiler free version. That was great. If the listener could see your face at home, it was like you were sort of possessed for a minute and like your, your face kind of glazed over and then your eyes like rolled back and then they like clicked back in like a sort of slot machine. And then it was like you turned into chat GPT and did a really great summary of that. I'm trying to battle AI for as long as I possibly can. Thank you. Soon enough, I won't need guests. I'll just talk to chat, GBT. And then I imagine literally one week later, I will not be needed for this podcast either. Because then it will have learned that role. Yeah, exactly. And it will do my voice. So it was, yeah, absolutely. So the more tangential and weird I can be going forward, the longer I get to sort of cling on to the sinking, ship of being a human. Yeah. Oh, maybe, so yeah, the boy that she gets overly attached to, whose mom gets murdered, she goes after that organization, I should say. That's the revenge. Okay, yes. Yes, I suppose technically it is an organization, isn't it? Yeah, so shadowy ninja clan, shrouded in mystery, and then a sort of grimy city crime syndicate. Yes. The worlds collide! Yeah. I mean, yeah, a little diesel, that crime syndicate is running for governor of Jakarta. Like, just trying to get power, like, that's it. There's both a lot of plot, and not a lot of plot, somehow, I would say. It's very... there's a... because we both have improv backgrounds and careers, it's very... there's like, there was the Onion, I believe, is the game. where you start off with one player on the stage and then a second player joins, then a third player joins, then a fourth player joins, and if you're crazy, like you can make it as long as you possibly want. But every time that happens a new scene starts and then it reverts back. So you go from four people to three people to two people to one. That's how this movie felt. It started off very simplistic with like, oh, okay, we have bad guys. They are worried about getting killed by the Shadow Assassin. There's the shadow assassin. Okay. And then everything sort of starts to explode from there. And then it gets brought back at the end to just her again. Which was very satisfying. Yeah. I sort of, I'm, here's what I'm sat on my stool quite early on this one, which is. I have, I've seen the night comes for us. I distinctly remember watching it quite, whenever it came out a few, a few slash maybe five years ago, whenever it came out, I watched it. That's. That's what I did. I don't know if I can be any more clear about that. Emil stop pressing me on it. I watched it around when it came out. Okay. In my house, on a TV. That's all I'm willing to say. With the cop up, go on. I remember enjoying it a great deal. That movie has Iko Ues and Joe Taslim in the leads. They are both very magnetic characters and skilled fighters. This movie has some less experienced actors and fighters, I would say. I didn't know that, but I felt it. And for this, I sat down to watch this movie last night and about halfway through, I was like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna tap out for tonight and go to bed. I feel like it's just not something about it didn't, didn't get me even from the beginning when I was like, Ah, here we go. Ninjas. And I sort of think there's, I have like an image in my head of what the night comes for us is. And I think I sort of remember it as like a martial arts movie when maybe it, like this movie has a lot more in common with like horror and gore. And it focuses more on those things. So instead of being like. Oh man, what a great exchange where you could cleanly see everyone doing all those moves. It's more like, gosh, everything's a bit grimy and dark and it looks like they're doing cool stuff. And then, oh, okay. And then that, now that person's been stabbed in the eye seven times, you know? And I sort of had forgotten that going into this is a long, a really long way around to get to this. But, but what me saying my stall out is kind of saying that I did enjoy this movie because there's a lot of pieces. to enjoy, but the sum of the parts didn't quite do it for me. I get that, especially if you're going into it with something else. And I did watch it completely blind. And I mean, I just finished watching it before we started recording. Okay. So you're still in the like, form of this. But also like, did not know anything about it, including the length, which is why I just finished watching it right before we started. Yeah. We'll get back to it. I'm in so much trouble, you guys. So I wasn't expecting like stylized fighting necessarily. Which I guess helps. And then when you mentioned the horror thing, I was like, oh, this also explains a lot of how it's filmed. And I genuinely have the note in my notes app, which I've opened during the movie to jot things down. Good boy. With the final fight, which is with her mentor, like they look quite similar. Yes. They're both dressed in black. in a dark room. Exactly the same length hair as far as I could tell. And then it's also very dark. But at a certain point she finally takes off her jacket and she exposes an arm like, ah, now I know who. Okay, thank you. Now I know who's who. Thank you. Not nearly as bad as I think some of the Transformers movies are with that where I'm like, oh, lots of metal on screen. I don't know what's happening. Oh boy. But okay, understandable. Yeah. So that's kind of where I am. I gave this, I don't need to say it to the end of it, I don't think. But gave it three and a half on Letterboxd. I'm still doing actual ratings, but it felt like better than three stars. But well, but not four. That's I mean, that's three and a half. I do. I do think I, I think I agree with that at the end of the day, even though I'm not as down on like the fighting stuff in this, not down might be too harsh, but like, Oh, not expecting it. Cause the first sequence is a little bit stylized and there are some very cool moments in it. Well, interestingly, and this is not meant to be a slight on the lead actor, but the ninja is wearing like a face mask for the whole of that fight, right? And so there's a few more quick exchanges and acrobatic things, you know, maybe it is the actor in there, but I'd say chances are it's not. Fair enough. Also that sequence to me, while I get from a plot stance, it's sort of like, we're setting up this shadowy ninja cabal or whatever. For me, it suffered a little bit from that sort of like Netflix-ization of movies where they're like, right, it says action in the description. So we need an action scene in the first five minutes. I guess this all looks cool, but I've no investment in anything that's happening on the screen currently. Yeah, it is a hundred percent like the point where with any movie within the first five minutes though of like, all right, how am I meant to approach this movie? How do you want me to watch this movie, director? And like this did kind of set up because there were some very cool moments. Yeah, first person point of view through the heat vision mask that they're wearing. The predator view. That was cool. I'd seen brain splatter within that. I was like, I've never seen that before. That's cool. And I was like, oh, so is this going to be like shoot them up from, I think 2007. Great reference for the kids. There's been plenty of other movies, but I can't, that's the one that did it for me. So that stuck in my head. Where it's like, this has nothing to do with great plot, great character development. coolest action sequences that we can think of and with shoot em up is like the coolest stuff that you can do with a gun. Like how can we like, oh the bullet pushes a draw out that punches somebody in the face. I'm like, realistic? Absolutely not. Is it cool? 100,000%. It's what a lot of Bollywood movies tend to do as well as far as action movies are concerned. We're just like, we're not here for the logic. We just want to show you some cool shit. That's what we're here for. And that's how I, so that's. definitely how it started, and then a lot of the other stuff is very... not as planned. It's more the Jackie Chan route of just, like, oh shit, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble. Yeah. I think it just took me a while to flick the switch in my head, which go... which, I don't even know if it's an on and off switch really, it's more of a dial. It's a spectrum. But turn it to the place on the dial that said, don't take this too seriously. This is what it is. Just enjoy it for that. In the first scene, someone gets their head very aggressively severed. There's no spoilers, but in a way that says, we're going for hardcore. gory shit. And I knew that going in. It's Timo. He loves that stuff. Yeah. But also quite, um, I'm going to say original. There was a shot in there of somebody, there was a sword in the ground. Somebody gets dragged with his legs apart to that. And they get cut right in the middle of their business. And you can kind of see it. It's like, Oh, wow. I've never seen that before. I'm all for creative violence, although there's also so much that I can take from it. Because initially I watched Monkey Boy, right? That's what it's called? Monkey Man. Monkey Man, sorry. Monkey Man. Great movie. He was a boy in Skins, Slomburg Millionaire, but he is now a man. Another movie that portrays Mumbai very badly, which I have also watched, and stars Dave Patel. That guy hates this place! But I got done with watching that movie, like, oh this is great, I got all my notes. because I'm not going to talk about it. Sorry. That's fine. Like I said, worst case scenario, I watched a great movie. Yeah. And then I thought, hell yeah, double feature. I haven't watched Kill this Bollywood movie, so I'm going to watch that. And I turned that off because it was not because it was bad, but because it was just very violent. I'm like, I've had enough violence. Oh, good. It's like I'm in my third hour of just people getting constantly stabbed and people being bloody and beaten up. And that is a heady combo. I need to watch something else. Yeah. And then you put on the robot cartoon movie. Yes. OK. But yeah, but when it does that, it's sort of like, oh, are we going to get a lot of creative ways of hurting people? Which is, you know, can be a fun night out. But when you set your dial to that. And I did expect that. And it does definitely deliver on creative ways of hurting people, as you say. For sure. And I did enjoy many parts of it. I think if you sort of break it down into like... There's, you know, there's the ninja scene at the beginning. And then there's like a night, the obligatory sort of blue and red nightclub scene that has to be in every action movie since John Wick. I'm like, is that what can we have a nightclub? Is there any other colors anymore? We've only got those are the only led lights available. What's happening? Yeah. And there's, okay. So there's like that action scene. Then there's like that action scene. I don't know that they're all very different stylized looks. And there's like one in the house. then there's like a car thing and then there's, oh, there's like a warehouse thing. And then there's, and then you think that's probably the end now. And then there's another half an hour of movie. And I think some of them, I just think like some of them, I was like, I think there's a scene in an apartment where she is on a bike and rides the bike into the house and then beats up some of them just kind of gelled more for me than others. And I'm not, I can't articulate very well clearly exactly why, but I think like by then there were stakes. So I was a bit more invested in it. And I think maybe, although that does feature somebody sort of getting his head set on fire and then like oil being poured on someone's head and like there's still a stabbing and still quite brutal, but that resonated more for me. And then sort of there was a like the good fight with the sort of Scarface type bad guy quite, quite close to the end. Um, what, what was my point? Yeah. I just think my star rating of the movie sort of went up and down throughout it. Like it started, I was like, my expectations, why this is going to be great. And then I was like, Oh, I don't know. It doesn't feel like it. I'm not, I'm not, it's not like getting me in my, in my action soul. And then occasionally I was like, Oh yeah. Okay. This is pretty good actually. And then there were just, by, it has to be sort of by design, but there were like so many moments. And I think this is also speaks to switching your brain into a certain mode, but there were just so many moments that were just like, this is absolutely ridiculous. And I know how ridiculous it is even to say that, but like for an action movie, this is ridiculous. There's so many moments where there's like four seconds where someone could have avoided dying and then they die. It's like the Austin Powers getting run over by a steamroller scene. There's like five different bits in the movie where you're like, well, why are you still stood there? You could have easily... I dunno. logic of let's say, let me say Assassin's Creed because it's sort of adjacent to this in the sense of like an assassin's brotherhood that has like has a code and a creed and this movie is also about yeah but what are you fighting for and is that worth fighting for and analogy accepted are you on the good side or the bad side so with if you ever played the silence of great games. The fighting mechanic is they, you know, as in many video games, they come at you one by one, right? Which makes no sense in real life. 20 of them would jump you. You'd be done, but that's not an enjoyable video game where you just constantly immediately die and that's it. Um, so it's sort of accepted within that realm because there's only so many buttons and whatnot, but because this is presented so much, uh, like with a lot of urgency and like last minute snap decisions. define if you win or not, or decide rather, sorry, if you win or not, then any moment where that is not happening stands out as being illogical, even though that happens all the time in action movies especially. Like, but why didn't you do this? And like rom-coms have the issue with just communicate with each other, god damn it. Like it takes a fucking phone call. Yeah, a text like, hey, I didn't mean that way at all, by the way. Oh, I'm sorry, then I'm not gonna go revenge date this. woman or dude or whatever it is. Whoa, what an amusing misunderstanding. Yeah. Like, no, I'm going to go. So like there's always that suspense of disbeliefs, but when it goes against itself, sort of in that movie, and this is like the song that's it's fast paced. Most of the actions. So yeah. Anytime somebody's just standing there like, Oh, motorcycle or like, Oh, car. Those are two of them. Yep. There's definitely two. Yeah. That spring to mind. Yeah. Immediately, we're like, wait, but you showed how unbelievably athletic you are. Right, right. Why didn't you jump out the way? Several moments where people are just like, oh no, the gun is empty. And I'm like, aren't you a trained assassin? You can't tell when a gun's empty. Sorry, I over-nitpicked. I acknowledge that was over-nitpicking. I accept the empty gun. Because in all the excitement, who can keep track of that? Um, but yeah, when it goes against that, it's the, I often bring up this, no, often I occasionally bring up the example, which is secondhand because my dad watched the Superman returns movie with a friend of his and the friend when Superman brings out this chunk of the planet up, like carries it into, I don't know if he carries it into space. You can't remember, can't remember that, but high up into the air, he's like, well, that's not believable. My dad just went, it's fucking Superman. What are you talking about? Yeah. What do you mean? But apparently something within the logic of the movie that was taught to him, that friend went, but that's not what. Yes. It's sort of intangible though, isn't it? Because no one is not like, you know, sometimes you set out the logic of a movie like very clearly. I don't know, like these, these are the rules of the game. This is what, this leads to this leads to this or whatever. But when it's movies like this, I don't know why some things are like, that's completely fine. A horrendous violence. I've laughed at it. What a great punchline to this fight. And then other bits are just like, you're just going to get back in the car while the other car is driving at you. If you just jumped out of the car, you would have been absolutely, you know, and I don't know why those things. It's like, I don't know, the sort of whatever part of the brain can discern. if something is CG or real or not, you know, it just jars just slightly. And I dunno, sometimes the scales kind of tip a little bit and you're like, yeah, acceptable. And sometimes it's just like, yeah, and you get too many as I think in the movie. And it just, it's just by the very, by the very end, I was like, some of this movie is like a comedy, I think, because it's. You know, you know what you're doing. You know, you know, you're a smart guy. You made the movie, but like, yeah, for all the stakes. I don't know. You have the voice of idiots like me going, and you just say, yeah, fuck you. You know, that's a movie. I wanted it to look cool. So what if five people are shooting machine guns at the guy? It looks cool if he shoots the rocket launcher in slow motion at them stood. Yes. In a massive empty warehouse. But I mean, I do agree where that's like, oh, but if it's that stylized, which again, to evoke Bollywood, like happens a lot. But it's mostly that. Yeah. And so, but this mostly shows you, again, like that Jackie Chan frantic, I'll use everything in my environment that I can, like the oil in the pan and the fire that gets turned on, like that type of stuff. Jackie Chan, if people died constantly. cost us so many deaths in this movie. It's like Corridor Crew, we added blood to Jackie Chan. It is a little bit. I mean, like, and they're not the only ones, it's just, I grew up on Jackie Chan, so that's the like, oh, the urgency. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Using the environment. And like, when there is the urgency, and like, I'm, oh my god, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble, I'm in trouble. Then whenever there's a decision where like, but now I'm gonna do something cool doesn't make sense. Yeah. Like, I don't remember it. I'm not a jickey chan ever doing that. Like he does cool shit, but it is always like, because he's pushed through the edge, like I'm going to grab all of this electric light wiring on the fifth floor and go all the way down. It looks incredible and it burns his hands in real life and he's a fucking insane person for doing it. But it was also the only way out of there. It wasn't like, well, there's an elevator right there or there's a staircase right over there. Like, no, he was surrounded and this was the only way. And there is something intangible because of a location they had scouted. I think that happens constantly where it's like, Oh, but this is just, I want this shot in here. Yeah. How do I get there? Yeah. And I feel like a lot of that movie falls in this movie falls into that camp. And I don't want to be like too harsh on it because I think it is like, there's some really, really nice, uh, sort of directorial and cinematography, collation ism in it. There's, you know, I'm not going to fight you on that word. stop pressing me on where I watched it. It was a TV in my lounge. Let it go. Yeah, like he's got a good eye for cool visuals. And I think the sort of glass half full of that is like, yeah, those shots shot on the, that in like super high frame rates of mega slow-mo of a guy firing a rocket launcher people shooting their guns at him in slow motion. Like if the, the aim is I want it to look cool above everything else, then you have succeeded. Right. Because as an image, that looks cool. However, sometimes, and I can't think of a, a word that describes it, that doesn't sound a bit harsh, but sometimes it feels like a little bit. for want of a better word, adolescent. Right. Like, it's just like, you know what would be cool. You know what would be cool here, but I've come up with something that would be like, and I don't- But it doesn't fit. Yeah, it's like, I'm not saying someone reigns Timo in, but I feel like some of it could be tempered in a way that just makes the whole thing work better. Like the movie is, I would say objectively too long. Somewhere there is an argument that the whole organisation of The Shadows doesn't really add anything to this movie or story apart from a long action scene at the beginning and another action scene in the middle where one of these unstoppable assassins... his main skill appears to be being really tall and then being a very slow fighter. I'm like, really, this is just sort of like quite a, again, I don't know if generic is the word, but a tale as old as time revenge story, right? Like if you chopped off the first 20 minutes, half an hour, it's just like a lady is... with mummy issues befriends a kid, the kid's mum dies, she duffs everyone up. The end. Chop off half an hour at the beginning, 20 minutes at the end. That is a movie and it works. Yeah, for sure. She gets drawn into the underworld. For some reason, she knows martial arts, right? Jackie Chan never explained why he knew martial arts, right? Fine. The shadowy ninja stuff is all this world building, which is which is also like the sort of second and third endings of this movie. After you're like, I think that would have been, that seems like a fine place to, Oh no. Oh yeah. I forgot. Now we have to go back to the ninjas coming back. Cause she's like, you know, left them and it probably would be okay. But no, she has to do to get everyone has to die. And then like, okay, we're done now. Oh no, so extra a little sort of epilogue prologue, whatever. End is another one. And then good cameo though. Good cameo at the end. I'm in for that. I'm in for the world. That one, the little franchise set up. Indonesian cinema world building. But yeah, it just that. And I, and you know, I feel like I'm, I'm sound like I'm being a bit negative, but, and we all know how hard it is to make any movie. And I think this is a good, well-made movie with great stuff in it. Good fights. Also, it's quite a low budget movie. I think I don't think it's, it's not like, you know, like $50 million. This movie, like, it's a sort of grungy and it had, I use DTV in a loving way, but it's very DTV. And I think I read something about how like a staple of DTV is where enthusiasm over overwhelms skill or ability. Oh, I love that. And it does feel, it feels so backhanded, but I do think it's true in this where I'm like, Timo's got so many good ideas, but no one is like reining them in a little bit and just being like, if this movie was a hundred minutes long, maybe it could have been like really tight, really streamlined. And some of the bits that didn't click in my head, if you're making the movie specifically for me, would have clicked a bit better. I don't know. Uh, one of them, oddly is Anchorman, which had a whole subplot with a terrorist organization. Uh, I want to say they're called the clock. That's probably not true. With another movie on it, but that is a whole different movie. Uh, the other one is South Park. If they have a little audio commentaries on their DVDs and they only last for about six minutes per episode. Cause they're like, we're not going to fill this whole episode. Like we don't have that much interesting to say, but a common theme as I like the a couple years ago, watched a couple of seasons on a board, just like the other commentaries is that at the beginning of the season, they would often have trouble with like trying to fit too much into the episode. And then that would hurt them at the end of the season when they didn't have enough ideas. What we should have done is taken this B storyline from episode two and just make that its own thing and do it better. So I think you're right in that of like, oh, you're maybe trying to do too much. Just at the beginning of this, about half an hour in. I was like, oh, this could potentially, with her doubts about why am I doing this, why am I part of this organization, which they don't really discuss. It's shown, but it's not with her when she gets set back, taking the medication or whatever those pills are, to keep her in line, and then by the third time she's not doing it anymore, like, oh, I see, this decision. To invoke Assassin's Creed again. Why are you so obsessed with Assassin's Creed? Because this is an Assassin's Organization and good and bad is the same. Because it is the fucking same. Where like this, no, Assassin's Creed Rogue, like you play an Assassin. Oh my god, he knows all the lore. Not all of it, because I stopped playing after that one, because then they did it yearly and lost all of my interest. But there was like, again, the potential of like, so we're the, we're the Assassins and we're fighting the Templar. and like, oh no, we're the good guys. I'm like, well, aren't you just two organizations kind of fighting for the same thing in some way? Like, where is the distinction? And like, I think within the Assassin's Creed lore, the Templars were like power and the Assassins are there for freedom, but both are like by any means necessary. And there's something in there like by any means necessary? Like, is that really? the path you want to go down on, go down with, or to travel down on. Uh, somewhere in there is the right way to say that. And I think that is genuinely interesting because there is like, politically there, there's a thing to say where like, I'm pretty sure everybody on earth wants the same thing, which is to have a happy, decent life. However, the way we get there, we have wildly different opinions on. And then there's outcasts, but I'm very bluntly, I'm saying like 80%, 90% of the people would be very happy if they had enough food, a home, and that's kind of it. But, and these days good internet, for sure. But then that's kind of it. Like not everybody, like yeah, there's a bunch of people like, oh, I want to have villas up in the mountains. And I'm like, oh, whatever. No, not too interested in that. That's fine. Like. most people don't really want to be bothered by that. But then there's these political parties like, no, but this is the way to get there and people get behind that. But then lose sight of, yeah, but why are we doing this? And like America is the pinnacle of this bullshit, like directly opposed to each other. And like, but it's not that you're not actually that opposed to each other. So I think there's a lot of interesting things there that this movie doesn't touch upon. Okay. I was like, he's bringing it back around. He's bringing it back around. They could have. Yeah. It's like, because it's a teenager and young girl, like there's something about that growing up and like, oh, this is what you've always been taught. This is the way like, there's a bit of disillusionment in your teenage years because all the stuff that you were taught growing up, which is an oversimplification with how the world works, sort of starts falling away and you see that it's not the case. And like I mentioned at the beginning, I think, maybe we're gonna be recording it. Like. Oh no, I don't know if this is my age where I think like, has the world gotten worse in that sense of having these very stark and unchangeable opinions on each other and like everybody thinks that they're right? And I think that's, that particular thing is not necessarily new, but now we have so much information that we definitely think that it's true and everybody's unshakable in their opinion. And it's why I love the movie 12 Ring of Men so much, because it just starts with, I... I think we should talk about it. Like that is kind of the premise of the whole movie is I think we should talk about this before we all just said, yeah, he's fucking guilty. It looks that way. So must be. And again, it's not definitive at the end, if he did or not, but like at least they took the time to talk with each other and connect with each other. So again, I think there's very interesting grounds for these Europeans. This is the way you're brought up, but what if that's shaken? It's like somebody who has been brought up in the church as a Catholic. Yeah, but what if? Interesting. But like, if you don't do that, then it's just sort of like you said, well, you can just chop it off and it doesn't hurt the movie if you just want to make an interesting quick action movie or with insanely creative ways to cut open people's nutsack and decapitate them. And so many eye moments where like, oh, I don't like this little stabby moments, which I also hate. So much stabbing. It's kind of his MO. I guess so. But then that dial can just set to like, okay, I'm just going to watch somebody like, I thought of 75 different ways that I can kill people and I'm going to show you that in the next 90 to 100 minutes. Yeah. And that's fine. But then if you don't have that, and I really, that's kind of sank in with that very final scene where like the master shows himself. And like one of her. former brother and number four, cause she's 13 and she's 14 and she's never liked her. I'm like, where is this coming from? What franchise set up are you doing right now? Like you didn't need that. When, if you had gone down that road of this potentially discussing all of the things or showing where the doubt is, then you could have generally like, and now I'm free, I fought my way free from all of the rules that like helped me in line and also like helped me for so long to survive without my mom there. this substitute family, but at the end of the day, I don't agree with why or how they're doing this. And now it's just like, well, there's another one coming because now she's with the master and 14 is her new, and I'm like, oh, okay. Well, that kind of undermines everything. Yeah. And doesn't, yeah. Cause so many people, like you said, so many people die a lot of like, oh, is this person important? No, bye. Okay. All right. Moving on. And then you set your doubts like, okay, so just fun action movie. Okay. Cool. And there's nothing wrong with that. Don't get me wrong. It's nothing wrong with action movies. There's nothing wrong with world building as much as people didn't like it in John Wake. The choice. I love John Wick four and God damn that movie was probably too long in most people's eyes. But somehow I guess I was in, I was three movies deep by then I was invested in all the characters and into it. And I think like, yeah, the world's building sometimes feels a bit clunky in this especially, I mean, especially like, you know, that, that the sort of sequel baity end stuff. Um, we didn't, we didn't, uh, sort of mentioned that the, the lead character is, is a teenager, right? That's the sort of thing. Yeah. She's, uh, played by Aurora Rebelle. The movie passes the Bechtel test. This conversation between two women, not about men. Right, right, right. Both physically and, and verbal. Yeah. And they also get to have a fight as well. Um, and it's not about over a man. Is that part of the test? I don't know if that counts. I think Timo is currently, Timo, the director of this movie is currently directing the sequel to the movie, Nobody, the Bob Odenkirk, 87 North movie, and I think that will be an interesting test or an interesting project. I think I'm interested to see how. he does with the material that he hasn't written and when he has to kind of operate in someone else's box, you know, like he's making an action movie. Great. We know he's got loads of great ideas, but also there's, you know, David Leitch going like, this is how A7 North makes action movies. Here's our stunt team. Here's this scripts by someone else. You know, this movie's coming in It'll be like, okay, great. This is an eight, seven North movie with a little sprinkling of Timo on it. But there was someone to go like, let's just pull him back a little bit. We don't need this. But it's just an ordinarily, you know, I'm just like, let them, let them fly. Let them fly. But equally, I'm like, get Quentin Tarantino an editor. Like, you know, sometimes. I'm worse than anyone at this. I'm the most kind of like. All the directors and editors are. Person of, I'm like, I made this. No, no, I don't want any input. And I'm the worst collaborator, I think, in that regard. Again, like when we bring it back to the text messages and voice messages, like that's why I have to do four takes. Cause I'm like, nah, that was, that was like too much fat in that little thing. All right, let's bring it back. I, why did I start talking about this? All right. And it's a constant learning, but especially doing it live and even doing this podcast or constant like, should I mention this? Can I make this where I want to talk about this? I think it'd be funny, but does that have anything to do with the movie? Can I reign it back in there? Like, I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe I'll shut up about this now. Something about Assassin's Creed again. What? What did you say? But yeah, so I think that will be an interesting thing to see how Timo does in someone else's world, I guess. his directorial skills and vision translate. And maybe, I thought nobody, the first nobody was like, fine. So maybe having a little bit of that extra spice will take the next one to the next level, but having somebody rein him in a little bit will be for the good. It just seems like mental to be like, no, I think it was a bit, it's a bit too much. Like this movie, the tagline may as well just be like, more is more, you know, like, There's no, Oh yeah. If you love constant violence, watch this. This is the dumbest argument to say like, I think there's a bit, I think there's maybe a little bit too much in it. Like, yeah, you fucking idiot. Like that's the whole point of the movie is, is too much. But, but sometimes too, too much, much is good. And sometimes too much, much is just like, yeah, I don't know. There's just some nuance that was, that was a little bit lost, but there are still some really great moments, some really great fights in it. And considering that the, the lead who plays 13 is not a martial artist, I think like comes off great and you can't expect it to be as much as anyone wants to say. Like it's like the raid mixed with, you know, John Wick. I mean, Keanu made for John Wick, he's got quite a lot of experience of fighting by now. He's also made three matrix movies, you know, like this girl, this girl, she was a girl. She was, I think she was like, It's under 18 almost when they started making this. Yes. She is actually a teenager or maybe she was 18 when they were filming. Wow. Her and the lady who plays Umbra, Hannah Malasan, neither of them were fighters or training anyway. And they did the old classic four months of movie martial arts boot camp. And so I think they, they absolutely smashed it in that regard. 100%. that speaks to the way it's shot and edited that they are portrayed well and it looks good. Yeah. I think the one, the thing we're gummed down on is like, it gets convoluted and like once it streamlined, like you said, with maybe hopefully with that sequel to nobody and that happens, it just lifts everything. Cause yeah, all the individual stuff I feel like is incredible. And there's so many incredible moments in there within the fights or even small moments when there's like. After the first ending, if you will, they're in the car and like, she smiles for the first time. I was like, that's really powerful because we have not seen you do that for the past two hours. There are a few bits of pathos that I was like, that's really well done. Yeah. Really well done. Yeah. They're, they're just, I would say few and far between and the sort of interweaving fabric could do with tight tightening. Plus, you know, take out. whole bunch of those shoot days gives you a bit more time to up the other stuff. I'm talking like I've made any fucking movies, but you know what I mean? I feel like I've just become an apologist on this podcast. I've become like a cranky old man picking things apart. And then at the same time being like, but guys, I really appreciate how hard everybody's working and I just want you all to know you you're wonderful. Everybody is wonderful. But you know. It's the old to invoke wrestling one final time. So there's a difference. No, but the, like the WWE style is main event style as it's called. It's very slow and methodical, but it gives room for all of the moments. And it's something and it's coming to Netflix in January. And it's the one of the best times ever to start watching wrestling. As far as I'm concerned, creative is better than it's ever been. And that's alive and all the servers go down. Am I right? I wouldn't know. I, it's not my fault. I didn't watch that fucking fight. I tried to watch it on four different devices. So with like independence style, or, or if you're just starting out, you tend to do a lot of big moves and it's very quick and you're not really selling that. Like, Hey, this punch hurts. You just continuing on and it takes all of the stakes out of the movie. And that occasionally happens here, but there are a few moments, like even the The kid that she's trying to get, once he makes his way back into the movie, like his makeup of him being beaten up was quite upsetting to me. Like, oh, they don't usually show that with the action heroes, never mind the child, but it sort of gets lost in the shuffle because of it. I think that's the quote unquote gripe for us with the movie. It's like, oh. All of these moments have so much potential, but because they come so quick, one after the other, it kind of loses the impact that it potentially could have. I think I wrap that up nicely. That was lovely. Speaking of moments. Yes. Have you got an action replay moment for me? Here's the thing. There's so many. That's true. It is a great movie for those quote unquote. action punchlines where somebody gets, I'm just going to list them off the top of my head and then I'll see if I get yours in a sort of, um, action replay bingo. Someone gets, um, his, uh, plastic mask melted in fire. So that was one of them. Uh, clear mass. Yikes. I have, they're scary, aren't they? leg on broken glass in a car door? Again, close? I mean, that was definitely one of the, I think the nuts like one and the glass window one were two where it was like, oh, I've never seen that before and it's well done and it makes my stomach turns. Well done. Yeah, that's it, isn't it? I think all the action replays of this are not just like, oh man, that's cool. Back flip, triple kick. It was like. Yeah, would I replay it? It was horrific. As far as the moment maybe is concerned, because again, because these kind of go very quickly, right? Like the next second one's going like, oh, and then we're onto the next thing. But in that opening sequence, when she gets to like the final dude in that, who's not the boss, but like his understudy, if you will, to keep it in theater terms. Sure. Who's like, why? Like, why are you doing? You killed the main dude. It's like, no, our job was to kill everybody in this clan. like you're the last one. And then she hands him a sword. And he's like, Oh, we're going to get like a nice final battle sequence. And we don't because it's, she's basically giving him the sword to assist her. And it's a very quick, and it's only, it's in one shot. It's almost silhouetted. And it's, that is beautiful. That'll be my action replay. It's right at the beginning. Okay. Yeah. It's truly a moment. That one didn't feature in, um. my mental Rolodex of spinning through people being murdered in the movie. But even that leg thing where he goes through the window and she pushes it down and just scrapes it over all of the shards that are still there. Incredible, but we also move on immediately from that. Right. I don't want to say the raid invented that move, but it certainly popularized the glass shards left in a window frame. or a door as a weapon that I've seen several times in movies in the past few years. I will, my moment is, I was going to say it's not someone being creatively murdered. However, it doesn't start that way. There's a moment where, and as I started describing it, hopefully your face will change, which you see in a lot of movies. And I think this is just a great sort of captured and the baddie policeman starts whispering in her ear about how he's going to like everyone you know, or you know, like once you're done and then it turns in such a beautiful way that was one of the moments where I was like, yes, I do like, I do like this movie because that is great. That's like something I don't think I've seen executed, pun intended, like that. And it is comically horrific also. It's too much, but it's also kind of right. Oh, 100%. Yeah, that works. That works great for me. I like that a lot. Yeah, because it's... Sorry, I can't. It feels like a spoiler. I think you've probably watched the movie by now. And if you... There's so much in there though, I kind of feel the same way about this one as with most Bollywood action movies, like, there's so much in this. You're still gonna enjoy it, if you like creative violence. If you like creative violence. And approach it in that way. If you've just watched Kill, maybe don't put this on straight afterwards. You might need a little palate cleanser, twixt. But yeah. To wrap up. I feel like I have been... not overly harsh, but I think the hype was too much in my bubble prior to watching this. And I was like, oh boy, I'm getting my socks ready to be blown off! And my socks sort of resolutely stayed on. But nonetheless, enjoyable ultra-violence action movie would have loved it to be a bit tighter. All right. That's, that feels as good a place as any to, to wrap up. If I think whatever we've said gives you enough of a taster of this movie that if you haven't watched it, you know if you're going to enjoy it or not. I feel like I want to say if you enjoyed Kill, you will enjoy this movie. It's not, it's weird. I'm kind of, I'm computing in real time. If it, if I feel like it's this, I don't feel like they're, they're particularly similar movies. they do both kind of have a sort of gleeful approach to gore violence. But I think Kil kind of holds a mirror up to you and goes, oh, you like this, do you? Whereas I think, and this is to my earlier point of like, it feels a bit adolescent. This kind of wallows in it a little bit in a way that's like, you know, what would be really cool if his dick went on the sword. I think you know what you're in for. Emil! Thank you so much for coming all the way from Amsterdam, the Netherlands. You're so welcome. Where, according to my world clock, it is currently 4.58 slash 5pm. You're Dutch, so you don't round time up. If you say the exact time, why would you say that? It's 5 o'clock, then it's two minutes before. One of the many ways I'm not Dutch. 5pm Amsterdam, 9.30pm, Mumbai, India. Hey, if anyone wants to befriend you, you must get on Letterboxd, Emil. You must, I insist, everyone joins Letterboxd. Stop playing Assassin's Creed and get on Letterboxd. Cause then we can just, you know, do, then we just know what each other's thinks about things without even having to exchange a message about it. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. Yeah, fair actually. Well, I hope when I see you over Christmas, we can go to the real movies and see real chairs together. That'll be fucking wonderful. Enjoy a movie together. Once again, thanks for joining. Listener, well, a listener, if you want people to find you online where it's not letterboxed, is there anywhere? I guess Instagram. E-M-I-L dot S-T-R-U-I-J-K-E-R. Emile Struyker. On Insta. I'll put the link below, it's just a taxing spelling, isn't it? I'm just so used to it whenever I check into a hotel or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fair. This is the name, there's a bunch of letters coming your way. Hey, I'm on the misspelled surname train with you. Oh gosh, I'm really reluctant to recommend Twitter these days since I'm trying to not be on it very much. And it feels like in the last week there's been a massive pendulum swing towards blue sky. But at the same time on threads, there's also all the threads of people going, oh, so are we, are we using this now? Are we? We're on here, are we? Anyone on here? Shifting. How do we work? How does this all work? I'm like, I've been on it for ages, mate. Come on. So it's, I don't know where to land. I've got an account on both, but. No, this is the old VHS Betamax for a little bit. I think Blue Sky Threads. It is, isn't it? Maybe when Twitter came out, there was somewhere else where we were like, I don't want to post to both, but currently I genuinely don't know if Blue Sky or Threads are gonna do it. So I'd just say Instagram for the old times, but there is an actual dodge to this Twitter if you want to do something. Podworthy. SimonFielder.com will point you wherever you need. I've got a sub stack newsletter where I talk about things that I like that are weirdly niche and nerdy. Like things in India, what I have discovered and other movies and things that tickle my fancy. You can find that on SimonFielder.com too. Emil. Yes. Final thoughts? Let's see y'all! It was a brief moment where I was like, oh man, if this was the Assassin's Creed movie, I'd be so in. This would be so good. But I have a whole thought about that on how they mishandled that anyway. This is me diving off a very high building into a hay bale. To end the episode. Byee
