It extends across the world and it can break all language barriers, for if an action film can deliver on the promises above, then who needs to know what's going on with the minimal "plot" to care?
That is exactly where The Raid succeeds (or The Raid: Redemption in the USA - goodness knows why it's got some weird sequel type subtitle?!) It doesn't really matter what the plot is, why the SWAT team are raiding the tower block (see what I did there?!) or why so many men are kicking the hell out of each other... Because, The Raid is a near perfect poetic love story to all action films that have come before it (especially films like Die Hard and Rambo.)
But how do you advertise a foreign film to a mass audience? Well, you make sure that there is absolutely no dialogue in the trailer... at all, of course! Take a look at the trailer for The Raid again here! You'll see that it manages to showcase the macho violence, but fail to even hint that it's a foreign language film.
Clever, eh?
If you're really bothered, the film follows rookie SWAT team member, Rama (Iko Uwais) under the command of Jaka (Jos Taslim) and corrupt Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno). They are tasked with the mission to take down crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) and his two main henchmen Andi (Donny Alamsyah) - the brains behind Tama's decisions - and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhain) - the muscles (and sheer craziness) behind Tama's decisions. However, what stands between the SWAT team and Tama are "30 floors of hell" and the residents of the tower block, who just so happen to all work for Tama too.
That is the basics of the entire plot - it revolves simply around the SWAT team vs. crime lord scenario. The plot does throw in some twists and turns along the way - largely predictable ones involving the corrupt Lieutenant and the connection between protagonist Rama and Andi (the brains). However, the film really shines with it's fight scenes... and there are plenty of them on display here.
The action/fight scenes really are the film's highlight. It uses martial arts for the majority of them and what happens on the screen before us is simply breathtaking in parts. It looks stunning. It looks amazing. It looks... beautiful. The fight scenes are some of the most tightly choreographed pieces of cinema I have seen in a long time - not the choreographed type that involves flying through the air and hanging on wires... oh no!
The hand-held direction of the camera and the bleak cinematography help contribute to creating a really gritty and intense atmosphere, which seems to perfectly off-set the well rehearsed fight scenes. While the fight scenes do teeter on the edge of being an exploitation style - there are men thrown out of windows, men being shot in the head in a glorious close-up, a man hit over the head with a hammer and finally, a man being half decapitated on a broken door - the film's style, and the fact that the camera never really lingers on too much of the gore, means that the film avoids this. Sure, the film is gory (and very worthy of it's 18 rating in the UK), but it never really gets as bad as horror films as, let's say... Hostel or Saw.
Another massive positive in the film is the direction. At times, it's completely immersive and really feels as if we are there in the middle of the fights. While the hand-held style helped create this, it's really down to inventive filming choices - like the camera jumping through a hole in the floor as the protagonist does so in the middle of a battle or the camera shot where the camera falls out of the window with the protagonist as he does so.
The fight scenes are also slickly edited together, which means that they never seem to get dull (even though there is a lot of fighting in the film. This is also helped by the inventive fights and kills that occur on screen, like the aforementioned door kill or the finale fight between Rama and Mad Dog involving a fluorescent lighting tube to the neck!
If you haven't guessed so far, this is definitely a film shamelessly being plugged to males. While there is no gratuitous nudity on-screen, the sheer amount of violence on-screen certainly makes up for that.
The only flaw I can think of with The Raid is that it is a very simple story being told. While it was an interesting plot device that the whole tower works for Tama and the developing relationship between Rama and Andi was needed to create tension in the third act, nothing felt completely developed.
When Tama finally receives his comeuppance, it's a little underwhelming. Andi doesn't feel like he has a full character arc to change his outlook on life. We expect that Rama will be the one to live until the end.
If The Raid was to throw a few more curveballs at us, it could have been perfect. If we were to learn a bit more about Tama, his history and how he became so powerful, he would have been an even more formidable antagonist. If Rama and Andi would have had their backstory explained just that little bit more, there would have been an even more tense third act.
However, having said all that, it's a minor gripe in what is an almost perfect love letter to the action films of yesteryear. Bruce Willis needs to hang up his wife-beater vest and Sylvester Stallone needs to put away his hunting knife, because the Indonesians (along with Gareth Evans - a Welsh-born filmmaker!) are now in town and they really know how to create an action film!
**** / *****
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