The Big Four

Tjahjanto's The Night Comes For Us is one of the best, most brutal action films I've seen in recent years, and Headshot was also a solid contribution to the genre, so I expected quite a lot more from this.

Sometimes comedy is very unique to certain cultures and doesn't really translate well. I don't know if that's the case here or if it was just not well-written, but most of the comedic parts (which make up the bulk of the film) are really cringe-inducing and not entertaining. The parts where the comedy mixed with the action were somewhat more successful. But overall there is just not enough action here.

At almost 2 and a half hours, the film is simply too long. They could have cut half an hour and it still would have been excessive. Tonally, the film is all over the place, and not in a way that was very satisfying. The best parts were those in which the violence was hilariously and intentionally over-the-top. But there were really only a couple of scenes like that in the entire film, and the "down time" between those moments was frankly difficult to sit through.

They clearly set this up for a sequel. I do think there's potential there, but only if it's a lot more focused than this first film and better prioritizes the action over the silly character moments that don't really work.

The Big 4 doesn't quite have the storytelling finesse of Timo's earlier works, yet it's a fun little action romp. The plot is just an excuse for the lead characters (retired assassins and a cop) to go after a rival gang and find their mentor's murderer, cooking up some fantastic set-pieces along the way. The humor works when it's not trying to be too goofy. One instance of it not working is that "possessed" scene, which almost looks like a badly done parody of Timo's own May the Devil Take You. That said, I loved how Timo attributed some quirks to each of his leads. Topan (Abimana Aryasatya) has a crush on his mentor's daughter Dina (Putri Marino), Jenggo (Arie Kriting) is high on his sniper rifle (which he refers to as his girlfriend), Alpha (Lutesha) comes up with an explosive gas cylinder known as Lucifer's Fart 3000 (LOL!), and Pelor (Kristo Immanuel) is always the "bait" whenever the gang infiltrates a baddie hideout.

All of this plays into the film's screenplay and character decisions. But, who can look past the fun action choreography? Every time a set-piece breaks out, you know it's going to surprise you in more ways than one. That's the beauty of watching a Timo Tjahjanto actioner. It's deranged and atmospheric, with Batara Goempar's camera constantly on the move, either capturing gory kills or exciting knife/gun/fist fights. The cast make most of the emotional bits work, and while you wouldn't consider anything here as deeply moving, it's good enough to make you care for their happy ending. Timo leaves room for a sequel, and although The Big 4 is no The Night Comes for Us, it offers exactly what it says it does.

Timo Tjahjanto is one of the best action directors in the business. If you need convincing, just watch Headshot (2016) and The Night Comes For Us (2018), both of which deliver amazing fight choreography and brutal violence aplenty.

Unfortunately, Timo doesn't appear to be so great at comedy, of which there is lots in The Big 4; his attempts at humour in this film are pretty terrible, making it quite tedious at times, especially whenever the film takes a break from the kicking and punching and shooting and explosions.

Things kick off in fine form, as the titular quartet of vigilantes make a gang of evil organ traffickers pay the price for their crimes. It's gleefully OTT, the screen painted red with the blood of the guilty. The foursome -- Topan (Abimana Aryasatya), Jenggo (Arie Kriting), Alpha (Lutesha) and Pelor (Kristo Immanuel) -- have been trained as assassins by their adoptive father Petrus, whose real daughter, policewoman Dina (Putri Marino), has no idea about her dad's other 'children'.

Three years later, Petrus is murdered, and Dina investigates, discovering her father's secret...

The comedy kicks in when Dina encounters her 'brothers and sister', who have now retired from the killing business, and the film suffers for it, the silliness being more irritating than funny. Of course, the film ends with a jaw-dropping action set-piece in which Tjahjanto piles on the stylish ultra-violence with aplomb, but it's not easy to forget all of the daft nonsense that precedes it.

9/10 for the action, 2/10 for the rest, which averages out at 5.5/10 (rounded up to 6 for IMDb).

This was just unnecessarily too long, and the humor was just too infantile, forced and outdated. The sad part is that it could've easily been much better had some of the cheesy dialog been omitted, and the entire film's 141 min runtime cut down to no more than 90 mins. The long dragged out and mostly predictable and silly scenes took away from what started as a decent story, then went full on stink-cheese with the lame outdated humor, and cliches. The casting and performances were decent for the most part, but their infantile dialogue and demeanors took away much of any caring for their characters. The action was hit and miss, although there were some cool choreographed fights in the third act. Had this been shorter, I may have said it's a decent one-time watch, but as is, I felt it was a waste of my time and not worth even the one-time watch.

At the beginning of the film, I thought, "this might be interesting", but as the film went on, I lost my interest. The story isn't really good and I couldn't get used to the humor either (exept for a few times). However, the action in this movie is very good. This is also the reason why I kept watching the film as I was always waiting for the next good action scene. There are 1-2 scenes that don't really look good and don't really make sense either but all in all, the action is well done and it's a lot of fun to watch.

If you are in the mood for good action, you can watch the film, but expect that you may be bored until the next action scene and that the story won't really catch you.