The Raid: Redemption

Image credit: IMDb

One of the many things that I love about cinema is its various genres and the appreciation of the audiences of those genres. When you’re watching with the right person, a film that you might never consider to be your taste and would not sit down to watch on your own steam can magically become something that you really appreciate. Cinematic appreciation is infectious and that is one of the many ways in which movies bring people together. This afternoon my partner and I curled up on the couch for a romantic bout of violence and action with The Raid.

The film tells the story of an elite SWAT team that is assigned the job of infiltrating an impregnable drug fortress and taking out the leader. But the team gets more than they bargained for when the raid goes wrong and the leader and his minions, which happens to be the majority of the residents of the apartment block that is the fortress, are alerted to their presence. After an early massacre, the SWAT team sergeant, a corrupt lieutenant, a rookie cop, and an invalid are all that remain of the force stranded on the sixth floor, and soon a bloody nightmare becomes real as they work to fight their way out.

While it doesn’t seem like an awful lot on the surface, there’s a lot happening in The Raid that makes it a most interesting film. Despite being far removed from kung-fu action movies, there is certainly something of that style of film within the folds of The Raid, with the central characters and much of the main fights and conflict happening without the aid of machine guns, but pencak silat, an Indonesian style of martial arts that is influenced by Indian and Chinese martial arts. Reflective of its featured fighting style, one can certainly see the influences of kung fu movies in this film with the most thrilling and memorable scenes being those that feature one unarmed fighter against a whole, knife-wielding gang. The fight scenes are immaculately choreographed with the accompanying sound design being spot-on in making us feel those painful jabs and punches.

Image credit: Comic Value

The story itself is very simple and becomes pretty reminiscent of western cinema’s one-man war, as there is basically only one good guy fighting against the armed residency of an entire apartment building on lockdown. Very Die Hard, but without those great one-liners. Amidst the fighting and the violence, of which there is a fair bit, there are some lovely little complex stories about conflictions of duty and honour, along with the hero’s personal secret struggle and ulterior motives for being in this death trap.

The Raid: Redemption is a truly interesting movie, a lot like the puddle: it doesn’t look like much on the surface, but when you poke a stick into it, you discovers there’s more to it than that.

Director: Gareth Evans, 2011

Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno, Ray Sahetapy, Tegar Satrya, Iang Darmawan, Eka Rahmadia, and Verdi Soliman