The Raid: Redemption:
****/*****, or 7/10
At the
last Dutch Imagine Film Festival (the former Amsterdam Fantastic Film
Festival) the Indonesian action film The Raid: Redemption
(original title Serbuan Maut) recently won the Silver Scream
Award with an audience score of 9.3. Despite not being a “fantastic”
film, i.e. not containing any particular horror, fantasy or science
fiction scenes, the presence of the film on the festival was well
justified: it's utterly fantastic in the way it portrays the human
body being able to take continuous extravagant beatings and stomping
without the person taking this kind of extreme punishment dying an
agonizing death, or in fact dying at all. The situation the
protagonists of The Raid find themselves in can easily be
classified as 'being in agony' though: they just fucked with the
wrong crime lord, and have to fight their way out of a 30-storey
apartment building in the slums of Jakarta, which unfortunately for
them is swarming with violent, bloodthirsty thugs.
So far
the simple premise of Gareth Evans' new action film which took film
festivals and movie blogs around the globe by storm. The reason? It's
just a damn fine action flick, delivering one excessively dynamic
action scene after another, hardly giving the viewer a moment to
recover his/her breath. It's an impressive accomplishment by Evans,
whose resumé as a director is about as short as the longest pause
in-between the abundance of excellently choreographed fights. His best
card here is his use of the Indonesian martial art of Pencak Silat,
plus the presence of some of the finest practitioners of this
fighting style in the world, including Iko Uwais who Evans previously
directed in his first Indonesian film (and second overall film of his
career), Merantau (2009). Apparently both of them weren't
quite done with applying Uwais' skill at martial arts to film and
figured there's plenty more where that came from. And judging from
the success of The Raid, they were absolutely correct in their
assumption.
The
Raid: Redemption starts with one of the film's rare moments of
peace and quiet, as Rama (Uwais) wakes up early in the morning, works
out, prays, works out again and kisses his pregnant wife goodbye to
start another day on the job as a fairly inexperienced officer in a
SWAT team. Today's mission: enter an apartment building and arrest
drug lord Tama Riyadi (an effectively sinister Ray Sahetapy,
balancing carefully between being cunning and cruel). The apartment
building itself, a grim, grey block of cement subconsciously shouting
'abandon all hope, ye who enter here' from every angle, serves as a
safe house for every criminal who is willing to pay Tama big bucks
for it, and is virtually impenetrable for normal cops. Consisting of
twenty trained men, some rookies like Rama, some with years of
experience, the team sets out to do their job under the command of
sergeant Jaka (Joe Taslim) and assisted by lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre
Gruno). Though they manage to capture the first few floors without
much resistance, things take a turn for the worst as a young spotter
succeeds in alarming Tama via the building's intercom. The man
obviously didn't get so far, or so feared, as he has without being
carefully prepared for potential intruders as well as viciously
sadistic – a fact adequately demonstrated by a scene early in the
film where he executes four tied up men with a gun, asks the fifth to
hold it for a while when out of bullets, then returns with a hammer
to beat the man to death instead of taking another bullet from his
desk – and he immediately locks down the building, using the
intercom to send the general message there's free lodgings available
for every man who assists in ridding his building of the current
“cockroach” infestation. And so the game for simple survival
begins, when the team finds itself surrounded by the world's most
brutal and nasty criminal scum imaginable.
Relying
on a plot driven by pure video game logic, the handful of team
members who survive the initial onslaught wrought by the large number
of thugs out for their blood, race from floor to floor to get to
their goal, which remains capturing Tama, now the 'end boss' of the
film, since their colleagues and car parked outside were among the
first to be ruthlessly offed, and the surrounding buildings are
loaded with more heavily armed bad guys, so even getting near a
window is playing with your life. Around each corner, in every
corridor and in any of the many rooms, danger awaits, and the
remaining characters, of course including Rama, Jaka and Wahyu, have
to move carefully to avoid running into their opponents. To make
matters worse, Wahyu himself proves to be far from clean, intent on
using the planned capture of Tama for his own career. There's no hope
for back-up, since Wahyu never informed anyone back at the office of
this SWAT raid because many of his corrupt superiors are in Tama's
pockets. Rama however turns out to have more noble motives for
participating in this assignment, as he means to snatch his brother
Andi (Donny Alamsyah), who broke with his family when entering in
underworld affairs and has since moved up to the status of Tama's
right hand man, away from the other cops and return him to his
family: when Andi learns he's going to be an uncle, he's willing to
help get his brother out alive no matter what, thus adding some
family love to the overall character development, of which there is
more than you would expect from a movie that revolves so much about
action and so little about scenes of dialogue. The plot between the
brothers is a nice reprieve from the otherwise wholly impersonal
killing going around, making the film about more than mere survival,
though using Rama's upcoming baby is a bit cheesy. The tension
between the few good men alive and their less moral than anticipated
lieutenant Wahyu also adds welcome plot, though ultimately The
Raid has no pretensions than to be anything more than a well
crafted string of gripping action scenes. Think of the characters'
plights as a bonus.
And
those action scenes are truly worth any lack of storytelling.
Starting with the usual gun fights in the first half of the picture,
The Raid quickly trades in bullets for fisticuffs, considering
the team members run out of bullets soon enough and have to resort to
using their bare hands and whatever they can find to withstand the
hordes of thugs armed mostly with machetes, which is of course more
fun for them than just gunning these cops down. Fortunately the
surviving team members prove highly skilled in Pencak Silat, while
the same can be said for virtually any assassins they run into. The
notion this suggests of everybody knowing Pencak Silat in the
Jakartan slums seems a bit farfetched, but the movie won't give most
people the time to consider this, showcasing too much physical
brutality to concentrate on other matters. Though the amount of
violence is both over the top and extreme, it's surprising to see how
implicit it is for the most part; despite the various quick close-up
bullet hits shown, when it comes down to the 'manual bits' the movie
often chooses insinuation over exhibition, implying more than it
reveals. This makes a lot of the many hardcore fights bearable to
watch, though there's still plenty a shocker to be found.
Next to
the abundance of action, also noteworthy is the various scenes of
suspense: though there are a few quiet moments, you're not in for a
moment of mental recuperation since such stillness is on most
occasions even more tense. A perfect example is the scene where a few
team members find shelter in the room of what seems like the only
good man inside (who indeed feels out of place a little bit) and are
forced to hide behind a wall to escape detection, but one
particularly clever killer's suspicions arise, after which he uses
his machete to prick through the walls. A cop's cheek is cut, at
which point he needs to bend himself in a very complicated position
to use his hand to wipe the blood off the blade as it is retracted to
avoid his blood giving their presence away and getting them all
slaughtered. It's impressive to see Evans handles suspense as well as
he does action, though he doesn't hide his affinity for the latter.
Overall,
the action scenes are a blast to watch and are choreographed to
maximum effect, but the truth is they tend to get monotonous towards
the end of the film. One corridor filled with bad guys follows after
another and the Pencak Silat scenes too feel all too similar the more
they are used, suggesting The Raid could have been a bit
shorter for its own good, though at 101 minutes it's not exactly
running long. Point is, the fights are so fast paced and plentiful,
they make the movie feel longer than it actually is. It hurts the
climactic end battle. Tama's most creepy agent Mad Dog (Yayan
Ruhian), an excellent substitute physical 'end boss' considering Tama
doesn't bother himself with martial arts and prefers outwitting his
opponents, has just dispatched sergeant Jaka in a elaborate showdown,
but Evans feels the need to outdo this a mere ten minutes later by
further demonstrating his actors' already established prowess at
Pencak Silat by having Mad Dog face not one, but two final opponents,
thus making this confrontation feel overly repetitive, though still
spectacular enough to keep the audience engaged. Evans sadly proves
incapable of moderating himself sufficiently, but The Raid's
status as one of the finest 'action pour l'action' films
remains standing firmly and deservedly. After only three films, it's
no surprise to see there's still plenty of room for improvement. And
considering Evans plans to make Redemption the first of a
trilogy of The Raid flicks, this can't do his directorial
qualities any harm at this point.
It's
also refreshing to see a good action film set in a non English
speaking country that indeed doesn't rely on English dialogue at all.
It adds just that much realism to the piece and means the movie
doesn't become cluttered with the usual cheesy oneliners one has come
to expect from films in this genre (which doesn't mean there's no
Indonesian oneliners present: undoubtedly there are some of those,
but it's doubtful we'll be seeing those quoted all over the web any
time soon). Not surprisingly, the general American tendency to deny
the existence of subtitles, coupled with the overall success of this
film worldwide, has already resulted in the announcement of an
American remake of The Raid going in production soon. It seems
unlikely any movie could ever come close to delivering the amount of
(physical) impact this film does, particularly because the martial
art of Pencak Silat the movie appropriates for most of its fight
scenes is itself Indonesian, and it seems unlikely American SWAT
teams specialize in this fighting style, let alone the effort it
would take for American actors to master it. It's reasonable to
assume The Raid's style
of fight choreography will be lost in translation, making the
original continue to stand out in the action genre as one of the
prime examples that, when done well, action films can indeed run
exclusively on action.
And
watch the trailer here:
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