‘The Big Four’ (2022): Hilarity Does Not Ensue

Directed by: Tim Tjahjanto || Produced by: Timo Tjahjanto, Wicky V. Olindo

Screenplay by: Timo Tjahjanto, Johanna Wattimena || Starring: Abimana Aryasatya, Putri Marino, Lutesha Sadhewa, Arie Kriting, Kristo Immanuel

Music by: Rooftopsound || Cinematography: Batara Goempar || Edited by: Dinda Amanda || Country: Indonesia || Language: Indonesian

Running Time: 141 minutes

Contemporary (2010s-2020s) Indonesian cinema and I have a complicated relationship. After falling head over heals in love with Gareth Evans’ The Raid (2011), one of the best action movies of the 2010s, I transitioned to the related action (e.g. Headshot [2016], The Night Comes for Us [2018]) and horror (e.g. Killers [2014], May the Devil Take You [2018], The Queen of Black Magic [2019]) works of Timo Tjahjanto and Kimo Stamboel once Evans departed Indonesia for his native Wales and the United Kingdom after The Raid 2 (2014). All the above projects were notable for their gory, violent execution and uncompromised auteur vision, much like the horror films of compatriots Joko Anwar (e.g. Satan’s Slaves [2017]) and Ginanti Rona (e.g. Qorin [2022]) I later sampled; and all — minus the works of Evans — shared a complete aversion to comedy.

Most every modern Indonesian film I’ve seen has had no sense of humor whatsoever, only becoming funny by accident and perhaps as the total opposite emotional reaction the aforementioned directors desired for a given scene. Whether a character loses their head, literally, after a demonic witch rips the corresponding body part from a Voodoo doll or a child actress stabs a gangster in the eye from the backseat of a moving vehicle, pretty much every comic relief I garner from contemporary Indonesian genre filmmaking feels unintentional.

Top: Protagonist Putri Marino acts as the much needed quiet, serious, killjoy center who somewhat balances the obnoxious personalities of the titular group of vigilantes she investigates. Middle: Main villain Marthino Lio (center) doesn’t make much of an impact in terms of personality or an intimidating presence. Bottom: The over-the-top ultraviolence of B4 is appreciated. Its characters’ endless yelling, however, is not.

That dynamic is what made me curious, if somewhat apprehensive, about Timo Tjajhanto’s latest feature, The Big Four (henceforth, B4), an unabashed action-comedy made in the style of a live-action Looney Tunes (1930-1969) episode or a violent Japanese animated feature. Led by one of the better actors from The Night Comes for Us, Abimana Aryasatya, and constructed around the titular wacky, dysfunctional vigilante squad (Aryasatya plus costars Lutesha Sadhewa, Arie Kriting, and Kristo Immanuel) that fight human traffickers in their free time, B4 works when it focuses on the brutal action choreography and fluid, controlled chaos of different handheld camera techniques that made violent modern Indonesian cinema famous. The film’s problems stem from its mediocre characterizations and, not surprisingly, the limits of its bizarre attempts at genuine comedy.

With regards to the latter, I respect Tjahjanto for swinging hard, for committing 100% , to B4’s hybridized action-comedy tone, particularly for incorporating over-the-top gore a la Edgar Wright’s earlier movies (e.g. Three Flavours Cornetto [2004, 2007, 2013]) or Turbo Kid (2015), which is something that even the great action-comedian Jackie Chan never did. However, much of B4’s comedic style falls flat for me given its overwhelmingly dialogue-driven nature (so much of comedy is colloquial when it’s not visual), and in many cases distracts from the otherwise competent action stunts. Even when the humor is more cinematic, most of the gags are a function of obnoxious sound-design or extended sequences of characters getting high on illicit drugs, neither of which progress the story over its engorged, slow 140-minute runtime.

Related to the irritating sound FX and overindulgent drug humor is perhaps my single biggest complaint with the film: The annoying cast. While Aryasatya does a good job as a sardonic lead man and straight (wo)man-protagonist Putri Marino works as the tonal inversion of most of the supporting characters, that supporting cast (e.g. Sadhewa, Kriting, and Immanuel in particular) drive me up a wall with their incessant screaming, crying, shouting, screeching, and overall cartoony, tiresome performances. Almost opposite in flavor is Marthino Lio as the main villain, who’s so devoid of personality I can hardly recall anything about him save for his facial hair and that he wanted revenge for something because, well, of course he does.

Though the action-packed finale picks up the story’s pace and features some of the better fisticuffs in the movie, by then you would’ve sat through over two hours of goofy nonsense from a cast that has more annoying than likable characters. I appreciate Timo Tjahjanto’s affection for cartoony yet explicit hyperviolence, but not the cartoony aspects of his actors’ performances; for me, action and comedy filmmaking is defined by using violence and visual humor, respectively, to drive a story forward; I find The Big Four struggles with both tasks given how much I wanted half the characters to die by the midway point of this nearly 2.5 hour film. In comparison to the Indonesian cinema I’ve sampled over the past decade, I think I prefer the unintentional comedy of otherwise super serious movies — genre stories played straight, in other words — to this incessant, hyper snarky noise.

———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Plenty of capable filmmakers have channeled their storytelling personality into effective comedy hybrids with other genres, Edgar Wright and Jackie Chan most notably. I don’t believe Timo Tjahjanto can or should try that after watching The Big Four, at least not until he finds another screenwriter who can channel their comedy into visuals related to the story. The other elements of The Big Four’s personality, its characters, are performed so insufferably I can’t enjoy the movie’s gory violence.

— However… that gory violence is characteristic of the best action for which contemporary Indonesian filmmaking has become known. Abimana Aryasatya and Putri Marino work better than the rest of the cast.

—> NOT RECOMMENDED, as much as it pains me to say.

? For some reason, the way every actor says “the Big Four” in English when the rest of their dialogue is Indonesian sounds hysterical to me.