Movie # 9 - The Raid

I think this movie is now closed in Brisbane unfortunately (we only caught it on the last day of it's run as it started while we were away overseas) but it may be on elsewhere and should come out on DVD so I'll still review it.

In short, The Raid is the most kick-ass action movie you will see this year. Really super violent, in a good way.  The story is simple - a group of top end police officers are on a mission to infiltrate an apartment building to take down a criminal overlord and his henchmen.  However, they have badly underestimated the situation and how many shady underworld types are living in the building.  Their plan to quietly go in and take down only the people on their list goes astray when the alarm is raised by lookouts inside the building, and from there all hell breaks loose.  The original 30 cops are reduced down to less than 10 within a very short space of time, and we follow the survivors as they try to fight their way out of this mess.

I should say here that despite having a Welsh director, the movie is set in Jakarta, Indonesia and is in the Indonesian language with English subtitles.  Even if you don't like subtitles, this should not put you off because there is really not a lot of talking in this movie once it gets going.

The movie smartly puts much of the focus on a young cop, Rama, who has extensive martial arts skills.  Not only is he a sympathetic hero (his wife is close to having a baby, which means you want him to live through this) he is also an incredible fighter and is given a reason to try to continue the mission against seemingly insurmountable odds.  There are a large number of fight scenes in the movie involving many different types of weapons - handguns, machine guns, machetes, knives - but the most impressive scenes are the hand to hand combat, sometimes featuring improvised weapons like chairs, bins, walls and doors or whatever comes to hand.  These fights are choreographed so, so well and you can fully understand what is happening and who is who and a lot of it feels really realistic.  There isn't any wire work or CGI here and most of the time it looks real and brutal although in a few spots I thought they were pulling their punches.  There is only one part of the movie where you feel that the fighters maybe should have been a bit more bruised and battered and sore than they were, but I can overlook that.

This movie is rated R for a reason - the fights and death scenes are brutal, they don't pull away from blood spurting from slashed throats and knees, or broken necks.  One death in particular is really unique and cool and had the whole audience saying "Woah".  In fact large parts of the movie were enjoyed very vocally by us and our fellow moviegoers.  I even overheard one girl saying "Wow, I've never seen a movie like this before".  I bet not many people have unless they are a big martial arts fan!

If you are into full on action movies or martial arts in any way, I think you'd enjoy this film.  The tension is wound up tight as the mission quickly collapses, the action is brutal and non-stop and the storyline feels fresh even though I know it's not.  I really enjoyed this one - I'd give it a 4 out of 5.