The Raid: Redemption

My number one list action movie is The Matrix because it balanced the depth of the story with the action. Somewhere among the top list, there was also The Dark Knight for the same reason. However, when speaking only 'action', I used to choose a Hongkong movie, Flashpoint, starred by Donnie Yen. Before Flashpoint, I'll choose a Thailand movie, Ong Bak which launched Tony Jaa career internationally. Now, when I speak an action movie that speak for the action, I will choose an Indonesia movie, 'THE RAID', choreographed by Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhiyan and starred by them.

The problem with Donnie Yen's Flashpoint was you need to wait about one hour and fifteen minutes to get the action really start but when it started, it was really worth to wait. The fight between Donnie Yen and Collin Chou, inspired by MMA especially BJJ was so well choreographed and made audience hold their breath and asking "are this sh*t a real thing?". In Evans' latest, THE RAID, you won't need those one hour and fifteen minutes because he already made the audience gasps in the first fifteen minutes.

I wouldn't say a thing about Ong Bak because in my opinion, Merantau was more superior than Ong Bak. The problem with Merantau was Gareth was trying to bring audience to understand the culture of Silat first because showing the full action.You can said, Merantau was like Yamakasi doing for parkour while The Raid was the B-13 of silat.

It is useless to review this movie from the plot because there wasn't any significant plot. The plot was made only to bridge between one action scene to other action scene. But d*mn! Even with the weak dialog and cliché plot, Gareth executed it well so we, the audience, didn't have time to analyze this or that. What we know, we were flooded by f*cking awesome action movies from infiltration scene, massacre scene, and of course, martial art scenes when the characters have run out of bullets.

I remember when one of Merantau review said Merantau was Ong Bak when handled professionally. The same can be said with THE RAID. The Raid was Flashpoint with larger actions and handled professionally from the music, cinematography, and even the visual effect.

The music composed by Aria Prayogi and Fajar Yuskemal was like a combination between Hans Zimmer's Joker theme and Rage Against The Machine. It brought the audience immediately to the brutal tone of the movie. In some scenes, those music suddenly disappeared, leaving uneasiness to the audience. I wonder how Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park will interpret the scene to his score because Prayogi and Yuskemal score was perfect for the tone of this movie and it was really different with any Linkin Park score.

The sound effect, oh my, I hardly believe this is Indonesian movie. Even Hongkong movies are rarely have this good sound effect, You can differentiate between the bullet shot next to you to the bullet shot from the next room, The sound of knife slashing was so beautiful to listen and combined by the beautiful art of Silat, the scene was a masterpiece of a brutal dance of angel of death.

THE RAID has little visual effect but when they did, it was done amazingly and effectively. Frankly, prior to watch this movie, I was a little bit disappointed when I heard there will be slow-motion scene in the movie. However, Gareth proved me wrong. He was not Zack Snyder. The slow-motion was done only in one scene and perfectly executed which I hardly imagined how it should be done in other way.

Matt Flanery and Dimas Subhono as DOP played camera creatively and yet it captured all the motion perfectly. In fact, some scenes was like a scene taken from art movie due to their creative angle but it didn't reduce the brutal tone of the movie, didn't make the impact of every punch and kick weaker, in fact, in some scenes, it enhanced the "BAM!" factor.

The choreography was the factor which made this movie popular. I have said previously that even the fight scene between Donnie Yen and Collin Chou in Flashpoint had been surpassed by almost every fight scene in the movie. In Merantau, Gareth didn't want to show the brutal image of silat due to the main character of that movie was a naive and kind young man from village. In this movie, the characters are cops and bad guy, so either be killed or kill. Both Iko and Yayan have choreographed it so well so even one reviewer said "I didn't know there was so many ways to kill people until I saw this movie" and he was right. Jeff Imada (Bourne Identity) and Yuen Woo Ping will recognize these people from Indonesia and you'll probably hear about them in coming years among the top list of fight choreographer.

After watching this movie, I found myself lost my appetite to other action movies. For me, other action movies was a snack before I can watch the next Gareth Evans project, BERANDAL.

• Kunderemp -

OK, let me start by praising Iko Uwais. Of all the actors, this guy fits the character flawlessly and is a highly likable actor. I thought I'd root for Joe Taslim (Jaka) better because of his better looks and taller figure but Iko is perfect.

The movie in terms of story: interesting. The premise is very simple, a bunch of cops trapped in a hellish building filled with the devil's men who knows silat and dead set on killing the cops. However, I can't really tell whats going to happen next, and there's enough twists that actually works, even if they were rather cliché (the rookie, the corrupt officers, the help from a friendly neighbor, the .. i should stop.. or i'd spoil the movie). There's nothing new in terms of plot, but that's not really a big problem. I sure do hope Gareth can find better writers to write the story next time.

What I do like is the pacing. It goes boom boom boom boom! and then it rests a bit before going into suspense mode, scary mode, and then boom some more.

Line delivery? Not very good. Some lines were obviously translated from English (it's written by Gareth himself) and some sounds quite cheesy (overused in other movies), like A: "Why us? why now?" B: "Why not?" Or "I need to get in, my wife is sick" And a bunch of others..

Secondly, some of them are not professional actors and as an Indonesian watching an Indonesian movie without subtitles, I couldn't catch most of the things they said! I wished there were subtitles!! I wished there were Indonesian or English subtitles so that the foreigners in indo can enjoy the movie as well! (although there's one guy with a manado accent who talks funny, obviously a joke which will not be noticed by foreigners) They either talked really quickly, or had poor articulation/enunciation that I couldn't hear what they said and had to ask my sister, who also didn't catch what they said, and had to ask her boyfriend. The only one actor whom I can hear clearly even when talking fast is the gang boss (Ray Sahetapi).. A veteran actor, obviously trained for acting.

By the end of the movie we also concluded that the Indonesian vocabulary in terms of curse words is so very limited. The word "anjing!" (means "dog") is used over and over, by everybody.. And the word "bangsat" (a bedbug) a few times.. "Babi" (pig) once, "kampret" (a small bat) once... They all basically means the same thing "Bastard"... So, this either means we are a really polite culture.. Or that they're trying to avoid censor.. Or that the translator for gareth's script has not enough vocabulary list... or maybe I really didn't get the badness of those animal curse words..

I mean I can think of many English curse words that is not too dirty.. Like.. Scum, filth, bastard, jerk, son-of-a...., prick, damn, what the heck, slime.. OK I don't really know how to translate those words into spoken Indonesian either so...

The fights were great. I can't comment on the choreography because I'm not a professional, but it puts you on the edge of your seat, so I think that speaks for itself. They hit hard, they fall hard, they kill hard, they die hard. I thought that some fights could be sped up a bit, as some moves looks like it lags a bit in terms of syncing, but only by a bit. If not, it adds a real touch to the physicality of the movie.

Most of the girls shrieked and made wriggling sounds during fight sequences (yes, one really shrieked out loud), and many sighed a relief, almost awkward laugh, when those fight sequences end. Which, in my opinion, means that the fights were a great success.

As an animator I felt the CG was a bit...hmmm... CG blood is slightly overused, but still acceptable, but one shot stuck out like a sore finger to me, the one where one guy falls over and lands on a balcony ledge. I really wanted to fix that animation.. Hahahaa... But again, that's because I'm a trained animator, as other people in the cinema gasped in their seats thinking that was real etc.

All I know is, it lived up to my expectations (a minimal story fight movie). I look forward to Iko, Yayan, and Gareth's next collaboration, which is this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0hYVksfyrQ Again, if you're an action movie fans, you'd probably like it.

This is no doubt one of the greatest action movies I have ever seen. This is a violent movie with very little dialogue so know that before going in. The hand to hand fighting in this film is the best to ever be put on the big screen. This movie seriously blew me away. The one flaw would be that it doesn't have the greatest plot but it's enough to keep the action interesting. Please do yourself a favor and watch this movie! .............................................................. THE RAID: REDEMPTION QUOTES Let's clean this city's mess!

High Rating and Awards? People may be tricked for the first time because this movie comes from a very unusual country, Indonesia. It's not often we see action movie comes from this country. Furthermore, the casts also aren't well-known at all in the world but guess what, they're really giving a great show in this movie. Gareth Evans, a Welsh born writer/director/editor repeat his success creating action movie after several years ago releasing another action movie also made in Indonesia.

For me, the real superstar in this movie is Rama (Iko Uwais), who was introduced as a newbie special force in the team. Fantastic martial art movements, which is traditional martial art called Pencak Silat from Indonesia truly filled this movie with wowing watcher's experience. Fast moves, intense close combat and his knife play in combat successfully increased my adrenalin. The best part of Iko was when He's about to face several people alone in a hallway. That was obviously cool. I think Iko plays the part like Jason Statham (fighting) and Steven Seagal (with his knife) but only better. The Raid was rained with bloodbath. So it's wise to avoid bringing children to watch this movie.

The other character that stole my attention was this man called Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian). In my opinion, it'll be difficult to find this kind of man in this world. His expression and fighting style was stunning.

When I watch movies, I always intensely wait for the twists. The Raid doesn't give so many twists but it still has enough twist that improve the story. Still this is a nicely written story. Simple idea but creatively developed.

At first, I thought it'll be a one man show where Rama played the whole part of fighting till the end. But I was wrong. The Raid gives fair proportion to fighters in this movie. Rama isn't the only one that showed a great fight against the enemy in this movie. There're the sarge, Andi, the last cop in control room. The only thing that disturbed me a little bit is the original dialog which is Indonesian. I don't know but it's kinda awkward for me to hear the conversation in Indonesian although it's my native language. As I imagine, it may sounds better in English. Never mind, it's just me.

With only 1.1 million spent on this action movie, surprisingly give me such a great experience in cinema. Great movie. Great job!

9/10

My knowledge of Indonesian cinema is somewhere between zero and zero. So when I heard about the excitement caused by an Indonesian martial arts thriller called The Raid, I felt I needed to check it out.

It's no secret that Hollywood action films have been stuck in a recent rut. They have relied on the same ageing bunch of actors making increasingly inferior films with tired scripts.

The Raid owes a debt to Die Hard as the action takes place in a tower block. A SWAT team are out to capture a crime lord and two of his most trusted man, the brutal Mad Dog and Andi located on the 15th floor.

The SWAT team includes a rookie, Rama (Iko Uwais) a devout Muslim with a young wife, heavily pregnant. The team is led by Sergeant Jaka and supervised by a shifty Lieutenant.

However the team are soon trapped as the raid is discovered and the hordes of bad guys start to pick off the SWAT team members until there are only a few left. Its Rama with his fighting skills that helps the others to survive but it seems he is getting help from an unlikely source and the remaining SWAT team members without help need to break out from the block to escape.

The version I watched is subtitled, the storyline is basic and functional. What is important is the unrelenting action and breathtaking choreography which is obviously inspired by Hong Kong martial arts cinema.

The film was directed by a Welshman, Gareth Huw Evans who is certainly a talent worth following. The Raid certainly deserves your time.