The Raid: Redemption

These past few years, action movies have come from more than just Hollywood. As long as your willing to look outside Europe and the Middle East (whose international releases tend to be quiet dramas) and start getting into Asia, you’ll find some superb films. And by superb, I mean awesome.

Martial Arts have been in the North American pop-culture consciousness ever since Bruce Lee came along and kicked everyone’s ass, but it wasn’t until Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that we realized they can do more than just martial arts. They can also really ridiculously awesome martial arts. Jackie Chan and Jet Li continued the tradition, having a lot of movies released over here, and we have a growing awareness of some other actors as well (Donnie Yen, Jackie Wu).

But those were mostly Hong Kong productions. The other countries in that area have decided to get in the game, and so we’ve gotten awesome action movies from Japan, Thaliand (anything that Tony Jaa is in), and this past week, we got The Raid: Redemption, from Indonesia.

Evan and I saw this up at Empire Studio 16, because foreign movies might get a wider release than arthouse films, but they can’t make it into every theatre. For that matter, the movie itself has been around for a few months (it was simply called The Raid, but I’m betting it was appended with a colon so that the rights could be sold – and have been – and that movie could be called The Raid), so it’s not like it’s getting top-of-the-line treatment. Anyway, trailers for the movie consisted of Safe and Lockout, two movies that are also coming out in April. Maybe Empire is getting a little shortsighted, or just thinks its audience consists of morons. Whatever.

The movie opens with cuts between a guy praying (Muslim, I think, but I could be wrong) and working out. So peaceful, quiet scenes interspersed with punching and kicking a punching bag. He says good-bye to his pregnant wife (cliché alert!) and loads up with the rest of a police squad to take care of some business in an apartment building owned by a crime lord who uses the tenants as security in case of invasion.

They infiltrate the building stealthily, but an alarm is sounded when they get a few floors up, and the solid excrement soon hits the rotary air-conditioning device. The action goes balls to the wall, and then picks up again when the team splits up and Rama (the protagonist) has to take on roving bands of thugs armed with machetes with only his fists and skills. And it’s awesome!

Seriously, if you’re a fan of action, you need to see this movie, if only to support people continuing to make movies like this. The action is tremendous, and the few parts where someone isn’t getting shot, stabbed, punched, elbowed, kicked, or kneed are filled with tension, which the music does a tremendous job of ratcheting up. There are a few flaws, none of which I care about. This is most definitely a theatre movie, and I’ll do my best to make sure as many of you see it there as possible.