The Raid: Redemption (2011)
"Serbuan maut" (original title)

A SWAT team becomes trapped in a tenement run by a ruthless mobster and his army of killers and thugs.

Director:

Gareth Evans

Writer:

Gareth Evans

Stars:

Iko Uwais, Donny Alamsyah, Ray Sahetapy

5 wins & 5 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Iko Uwais	...	Rama
Joe Taslim	...	Jaka
Donny Alamsyah	...	Andi (as Doni Alamsyah)
Yayan Ruhian	...	Mad Dog
Pierre Gruno	...	Wahyu
Ray Sahetapy	...	Tama
Tegar Satrya	...	Bowo
Iang Darmawan	...	Gofar
Eka 'Piranha' Rahmadia	...	Dagu
Verdi Solaiman	...	Budi
Alfridus Godfred	...	Machete Gang #1
Rully Santoso	...	Machete Gang #2
Melkias Ronald Torobi	...	Machete Gang #3
Johanes Tuname	...	Machete Gang #4
Sofyan Alop	...	Machete Gang #5

Storyline

In Jakarta, Indonesia, Lieutenant Wahyu organizes the invasion of an apartment building that is the safe house of the powerful and cruel drug lord Tama and his gang. The SWAT team breaks in the building but one lookout sees and warns the gangsters and the police force is trapped on the seventh floor. They learn that Lt. Wahyu has not informed his superiors about the operation. Now the police officers have to fight with limited ammunition against the armed and dangerous gangsters.

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Plot Keywords:

gangster | swat team | police | apartment building | apartment | 

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Taglines:

When there's nowhere left to run or hide... you fight or die.

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Genres:

Action | Crime | Thriller

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong brutal bloody violence throughout, and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Blog Official Facebook [id]

Country:

Indonesia USA

Language:

Indonesian

Release Date:

13 April 2012 (USA)

Also Known As:

The Raid: Redemption

Filming Locations:

Indonesia

Box Office

Budget:

$1,100,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$213,785 (USA) (23 March 2012)

Gross:

$4,105,123 (USA) (6 July 2012)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Pt. Merantau Films, Celluloid Dreams, XYZ Films

Technical Specs

Runtime:

101 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital Datasat

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Yayan Ruhian, who played the Mad Dog character, had once trained Pencak Silat for Pasukan Pengamanan Presiden (the Indonesian Presidential Security Forces- equivalent to US Secret Service) in 1989 and for the Indonesian Military Police Corps in the early 1990s.

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Goofs

Punch sounds are heard when no punches were laid. This is in the American version of the movie. In the original all sounds are fine. The goof is created by bad dubbing/ sound editing making the movie understandable for that country.

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Quotes

Tama: Go to work and have a fun.

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Connections

References [Rec] (2007)

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Soundtracks

"Razors Out"
Written by Mike Shinoda and Chino Moreno
Performed by Chino Moreno

User Reviews

Just when you thought the book couldn't be rewritten . . .

NOTE: Early, gushing reviews from TIFF Midnight Madness presentations should not generally be trusted, as many fest-goers are unable to separate the film from the experience, and formal critical consensus often sends most Midnight films into obscurity. Thankfully, THE RAID earns its stripes and deserves its praise, and stands firmly above the typically overeager reactions heaped on many other films screened in the Midnight program this year and in years past.

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In the future, when someone tells you a movie is wall-to-wall martial arts and gunplay, you should have no choice but to ask them how it rates against this picture, which has so much gunfire and brutal martial arts action -- all of it meticulously choreographed in ways more refreshing than I'd ever have thought possible in this world of peak-performance Donnie Yens and Tony Jaas -- that I very nearly lost the hearing in my right ear, in no small part thanks to the tendency of TIFF sluggos to mistake volume for quality when adjusting their sound levels in an aged, less-than--acoustically-ideal theatre.

Star Iko Uwais is the real deal: wiry, lightning-fast and evidently the leader of a team of experts that truly takes martial arts choreography into new territory with this film (and, to a lesser extent, MERENTAU before it). If there's a downside to his inevitable celebrity because of this film, it's that Indonesian cinema in general will fare no better than Thai cinema has in the wake of Tony Jaa. Like Jaa, anything Uwais makes from this film on -- especially if he keeps teaming with writer-director Gareth Evans, as he should for at least a couple more pictures -- will gain instant and welcome interest from the west, while the rest of Indonesian cinema (such as it is!) will remain the domain of low-brow entertainment that caters largely to the locals, with the exception of the occasional horror movie that can be scooped up for exploitation by "Asian Extreme" DVD labels and streams in the U.S. and Europe.

What really separates this picture from the hordes of martial arts films from the region is its heavy use of Silat, the native martial art of Indonesia. I've seen a billion martial arts pictures over the years, and a million "styles" to go with them, but I'll admit my knowledge of Silat was absolute zero, and this movie turned out to be a wonderful wakeup call.

The key thing about Silat is that it involves knives, lots of 'em, and the film's heroes and villains deploy them with extreme prejudice for almost the entire duration. One stab won't do, but ten capped off by a throat slashing is a good way to gauge whether you've won the battle.

By way of example, picture the exemplary alley-fight-with-sharp-weapons between Donnie Yen and Jackie Wu Jing in SPL (a personal favourite sequence). Now, double the speed (!), and make the ultimate goal to stab, slice or otherwise eviscerate your opponent into oblivion, and you've got most of the hand-to-hand combat in THE RAID. Hero cop Uwais has this neat little trick where he stabs a long blade deep into your upper thigh, then yanks it clean down to your kneecap. Ouch! This thing is bloody with a capital B, but it's so exceptionally well choreographed, photographed and edited that you never lose sight of the geography surrounding the combatants or feel like you've missed a single blow or puncture as each new pair (or group!) of fighters grinds each other down.

Evans' editing in particular is a standout, and rather refreshingly, it isn't used to hide little bits of phony business or make the fight participants look more skilled than they really are, such as it often is in so many action pictures these days (both in western, and, sadly, many Asian cinemas; Legend of the Fist, I'm looking at you). Evans' performers know their stuff, and his editing does more showing than telling.

As to the picture as a whole, if you thought the final 40 minutes of John Woo's HARD BOILED were collectively one of the greatest pieces of action cinema from anywhere ever, imagine that cinematic Nirvana expanded to feature length, and with virtually no fat. The movie starts with a team of elite cops attempting to covertly secure a maze-like high-rise slum apartment building run by a merciless drug lord (when we first meet him, he's executing five bound and gagged men in his office, but he runs out of bullets for the fifth guy, which causes him to casually grab a hammer out of his desk drawer . . . ). Within minutes, though, his goons -- who populate every floor of the building like cockroaches, fight like rabid dogs and spontaneously appear around every corner and out of every doorway -- turn the tables and wipe out most of the fleet in a monster battle of guns, fists, feet and the ubiquitous knives, trapping just a precious few of our heroes on the sixth and seventh floors with little hope of escape.

Aside from a couple of quiet moments where allegiances on both sides of the field shift, not unexpectedly, that's pretty much it in terms of plot, and it obvious the filmmakers would have it no other way. This is a showcase, for Silat, for Indonesia and for Iko Uwais, who is very much the "next Tony Jaa" (as I'm sure he'll be labeled far and wide), for better and, somewhat regrettably, for worse in terms of his country's film industry, for he may very well come to single-handedly represent it around the globe. Not that I'm complaining after having been winded by such an audacious effort as THE RAID.

Barry Prima who?