The Big 4

I'd count the director's THE NIGHT COMES FOR US as one of my all-time favourite movies, an absolutely blistering attack on the senses and all-out martial arts hit. This follow-up adopts an action comedy template and has more of that top action direction, but at the same time it somehow misses the mark. At two and a half hours in length, the action hits but only occupies a third of that running time. The rest is made up of inane comedy and no story. The characters are very limited here, the actors unknown and lacking gravitas, and some of them cross over into being annoying. The gory FX and fight choreography are as great as ever, but I wish the rest wasn't such a drag.

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).

Nice film, with good actor.. for indonesian movies, is very amazing and awesome,. The way director took a film so coll and cinemart..

That's what i kept on saying when watching the movie.

It was a thrilling watch, that's for sure. The action was solidly well choregraphed; the filmatography was briliant. The movie somehow balanced the gore and comedy seemlessly; and CGI showed some high quality work. The story was well told; the plot was straight to the point, without any unnecessary scenes (don't you hate it when they tend to drag it out? I mean, just get to the point!). The cast was great! They really delivered. I've been following Kristo Immanuel for a while, and I was really glad to see him in bigger projects like this one (and really nailed it!).

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I was laughing and biting my nails at the same time. Indonesian movies have come a long way -- I mean, the talent 💯

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.

Solid movie with action, gore CGI, good humor, but it doesn't have gun recoil whatsoever in the movie. Everyone knows that when you fire a gun, it will kick back, it is called recoil, but this movie fails to show that simple detail, even when the skinny girl fires the bazooka, no kick back whatsoever, it is a freaking bazooka!!

Sometimes, good attention to details will make it a great movie, I dont know why am I so bothered about this "receh" detail. But overall this is a good movie, story is simple, comedy is good, cinematography is top notch. Putri Marino character is angry all the time I dont know why tho...