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 -

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.

• - - - - - - - - - - - - -

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?

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.

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!

After seeing the trailer, I knew I had to see this movie. Rarely our my high expectation met but The Raid surpassed it. If your seeing this movie, it's because you want to see action and The Raid hit every mark. The action is a mix of shootouts, hand to hand weapons, and mostly good ol' fashioned fists.

The Raid proves again how far behind American action films are. I've seen other great foreign action films like Ong-Bak, The Protector, and Ip man but The Raid surpasses them by highlighting a martial art style not shown in any recent films. Its brutal and never lets up. It's not your typical ultra clean fighting that has been done to death but something that looks real and desperate at times as people try to survive outnumbered.

Story wise it isn't anything great but at the same time it's better than most martial arts films due to interesting twists and being incredibly well paced to before you know it its over and you want more.

If your a fan of action films, there isn't any better out there now or any even close in decades past.