THE RAID: REDEMPTION

This film gets a new, silly subtitle in America and a silly, nu-metal soundtrack, but rest assured, you will still leave the theater clutching your sides and coughing up blood.  This movie will kick your ass.  In the slums of Jakarta, a SWAT team raids an decaying apartment tower where a crime lord has set up shop.   They have to ascend 15 floors of desperate and deranged slum dwellers who have been promised free rent for life if they kill any of the intruders.  Punch, kick, throw, slash, stab, shoot, crash, boom, bang, KAPOW!  It's an inside-out Indonesian Assault on Precinct 13 (the original damnit!)

The odds are stacked more evenly than it might seem.  The SWAT team is outnumbered, but they are better trained and better armed.  Many of the tower's residents just lock their doors and pretend nothing's happening, so the cops are able to sneak around a little bit between some of the apartments.  They even use an ax, not just for man-splitting, but for chopping an escape hatch between two floors.  If you enjoy weapons cobbled together on the fly, just wait until you see a propane canister thrown inside a fridge.

Total narrative economy leaves more time for ass-kicking.  Every set up has a purpose.  No extraneous characters.  Every sequence pushes things a little bit further.  After all, this is an action movie, so it needs action.  No romantic subplots, or comedic relief, or self-righteous sermonizing.  Even the supposed Redemption of the subtitle is minor element.  The only real reason that action ever stops is for tension; like a scene of two injured cops struggling to hide behind a flimsy makeshift false wall whilst goons search the apartment by thrusting their machetes through said walls.

I don't know much about martial arts but I can compare this film's fights to those from other films.  Here I would say the emphasis is placed more on situation rather than setting.  For example, when a melee breaks out on the floor used as a drug lab, nobody is throwing beakers full of acid or brandishing needles full of drugs or dodging exploding chemical tanks.  Somebody swings a chair and two guys fight on a big long table.  For another example, take the climatic fight.  The setting is just a shabby room.  The situation, however, is that the villain's right hand man wants to duel both our two remaining heroes and reluctant allies at the same time.  Since we've seen his brutality up close before, we know why he's so confident and why the heroes are so wary, and it makes the fight all that much better.

~ Director Gareth Evans is a Welshman who ended up in Indonesia making martial arts documentaries which transitioned into making martial arts narrative films.

~ The particular form of martial arts being displayed here is called Pencak Silat, more or less the official style of beating people up in Indonesia.

~ There were at least two people listed in the credits with the nickname 'Piranha' which is definitely the bare minimum for a movie like this.

~ Somebody gets killed by a door.

~ Somebody gets killed and that only makes them angrier.

~ There is a gun with a single bullet left in that gets bounced around between some of the characters, and the suspense only increases when it finally ends up with somebody who doesn't know that it only has one bullet.

~ The henchman here are somewhat realistic.  Most of them look pretty normal.  T-shirts, flip flops, track pants or cargo shorts, and a machete is all you need to start a career in villainy.

~ This film is already fast tracked for sequels and an English language remake.

~ Terrible joke?  Okay.  I give this one broken thumb up.  Terrible.  Just terrible.

~ Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park contributed music for the American release.  I can't be sure but I bet the original soundtrack was better.