Review #594: 'The Raid' (2011)

Released amongst a flurry of post-Expendables 80's action homages, The Raid arrived to be met with almost universal acclaim from audiences and critics alike. So while Stallone and his crew have wetted audiences appetites for big guns and corny dialogue again - that coincidentally coincided with the return of the original oiled-up arse-groper, Arnold Schwarzenegger - The Raid took action back to the hand-to-hand delights of Asian action cinema and created what is undoubtedly the finest collection of fisticuffs that has ever been committed to film. Made with little budget, an inexperienced cast, and a director from Wales (the movie itself is Indonesian), the result is simply mystifying, blowing away all pretenders.

The plot is simple. Expectant father Rama (Iko Uwais) and a 20-man police squad led by Sergeant Jaka (Joe Taslim) and Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno) are sent to an apartment block run by crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy). Made up mainly by rookies, the team intend to sneak in undetected, taking Tama and his two henchmen Andi (Donny Alamsyah) and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian) alive. Things don't go to plan when they are seen by a spotter and are quickly confronted by a small army of the apartment block's residents. With the squad separated and quickly getting smaller, and Lieutenant Wahyu's intentions becoming increasingly unclear, Tama announces that any man that kills a policeman will be allowed to live there free of charge, causing even more cronies to descend on them.

While the plot sounds distinctly similar to that of Die Hard (1988) (and one copied by Dredd a year later), the set-up is a simple platform to allow director Gareth Evans to unleash a near-endless orgy of fists, feet, knives and, well, more fists. Had the action been anything less than spectacular, The Raid would be a massive bore, but thankfully, it is jaw-dropping. Every fight is a lightning-fast array punches and kicks with spatters of black humour and squirm-inducing deaths. Yet there are no bone-snapping close-ups or time-altering impact accentuations that plague action movies with lesser scope and respect for it's audience - this is fast, brutal, almost real. Sure, the characters simply defy the limits of the human pain threshold, but it's the realism of the punches and stabbings that give the fights their impact.

You will need to leave your brain at the door however, as beyond the action scenes, there is very little going on in terms of story and believability, which makes the film somewhat shallow in terms of what it could have been given a little more thought. Every resident in the apartment complex is a master of some martial art or other. But that I can easily forgive, as it just offers the chance to make every single fight memorable. If you loved the famous fight scene in They Live, then you're in for a treat towards the end, where we get a truly nasty extended three-way face-off, that displays some fine martial artistry that will surely put pencak silat on the movie map. The Raid is destined to be the film that all action movies are compared with, and undoubtedly silenced by. Sadly, with the absence of any real plot developments, The Raid will always be a great action movie to me, rather than a great movie.


Directed by: Gareth Evans
Starring: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno
Country: Indonesia/USA

Rating: ****

Tom Gillespie