The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Increasingly now, foreign filmmakers are making better Hollywood action movies than Hollywood is. In this case an English director who evidently now works in Indonesia seems to have mastered all the action story tenets despite this being only his 3rd feature film. Even more, the number of layers to this story parallels the number of floors in the apartment building that is at the centre of this film. All I could think of is how Hollywood will eventually commandeer this film and make a lifeless by-the-numbers knock-off that will only stain the original. And of course, the budget of the original is about the same as a Hollywood B-list movie actor's salary.

This film is a disciple of the Asian extreme action genre, with over-the-top karate and acrobatics mixed with guns and violence. Betrayal isn't just a plot twist in these films, it's the first act. At least 5 or 6 betrayals are expected in these type of films where thieves betray other thieves, cops betray other cops, and honest guys get betrayed by best friends. What makes this film a standout is the unflinching action and well choreographed fight sequences by leads Yayan Ruhian and Iko Uwais. Early Jackie Chan movies got this kind of notice overseas because of their energy and gifted action instincts. Here, Gareth Evans is a one man powerhouse writer, director, and editor, masterminding this intricate chess match of good guys trapped on the sixth floor, with angry thugs coming up from the fifth floor and determined killers descending from the seventh floor. You feel our heroes feel trapped and vulnerable. Evans finds sources of tension from many places. The apartment building has tenants with unknown loyalties. The man heading the raid has unknown motives. Each character is well established with a minimum amount of screen time, keeping the action going.

I was urged by a movie reviewer to see this film, describing it as one of the best action movies ever made. And you have to agree, this film, after providing a few minutes of backstory, takes off straight into the police raid of the apartment building filled with bad guys and a gang lord. Cinematography takes lessons from "Saving Private Ryan", using hand-held documentary style footage during firefights, and blasting the soundtrack with dozens of loud guns firing at once. The pulsing synthesiser score also hits with the punchy music stabs that propel the momentum as the police troops make their way up to the big bad guy on the top floor.

Action sequences are creative and provide new angles and fight tactics that keep the hand-to-hand combat kinetic. Fans of the Bourne movies are encouraged to seek this out. (Not a coincidence that a Bourne Legacy trailer played before this showing). Many human moments also ground this film. An innocent man caught in the crossfire, gets asked to risk his life. A police squad leader who gets frustrated when the man conducting the raid puts his troops at risk. A child hired as lookout for the gang lord must die in order to prevent him from sounding the alarm.

There is an intensity to this film that resembles scenes from "Black Hawk Down", with very intelligent setups for conflict, and innovative approaches to getting from point A to point B. This fresh drive, propelled by good guy Iko Uwais makes this 1 hour 40 minute film zip along with no time out to catch your breath. The fact this film is subtitled will prevent it from being a widespread hit, although it will no doubt have a long life on DVD. Instead, I expect director Gareth Evans

Fmovies: i really didn't think i would ever rate a movie 10/10. but i'm doing so now without a 2nd thought.

the script in nothing special, the dialogs blow your mind. But let me just say this: it's just a real Live Stream looking action movie, no silly slow-motion-zoom-in blood filled intercuts, just man against man until one can fight no longer. and it doesn't stop for a second, no bathroom breaks, trust me.

my only problem with this move is that i will never be able to enjoy another martial arts action film again.

Now stop reading reviews and go see it :)

I'm one of those prejudiced individuals who rarely watch non-English speaking films. Sometimes I don't like a certain language (especially Swedish or french movies), sometimes I can't tell people apart from each other (especially Asian movies). I know I'm an idiot, but that's why it took me some time before I watched this one. I'm so glad I did. Just watched it on blu-ray. My blu-ray had no features or extras, so that was disappointing. The movie however was far from it.

There is so much to like about this film. I'll try to explain why I enjoyed this:

1) The environment. A confined building with many floors. It makes that much difference to me when the environment is not only realistic, but cramped in a manner that makes the action exciting and creative, adding to the overall intensity.

2) The brutality and choreography in the fights. There's some quite imaginative stuff here, and lots of it - there is no way anyone can say that there is not enough action in "The raid redemption". Trust me, there is. This is not your usual PG13-pudding. There is an abundance of shooting, stabbing, punching, breaking bones and everything you can think of. Everything is shown in a brutal manner, and what I like the most about it is that the movie pushes forward with such a pace that it doesn't really overdramatize or dwell on the gore, it all just happens in the heat of everything. This makes the violence both satisfying and not too hard on the viewer.

3) This is an action movie and nothing else. No complicated story lines, no romance, not much character development but straight to the point instead. The movie gives enough reasons for what is happening, and it's easy to enjoy it as it is: "just" an action movie with nothing in it to distract you from what's it all about. In many ways it feels much less silly than most action films: since it's not trying to build up much of a story, it doesn't fail on the terms of story. Same with characters.

4) This is how you use a budget. A little over one million dollars? Simply amazing. "Green Lantern" cost 200+ million dollars and it was a mess without any passion in it. Granted, not the best example, but you get the point. When you love what you do and you're good at it - while surrounded with a good crew - you get this. Many shots are genuinely very well made and impressive. Even a 5-second continuous shot with a moving camera can look pretty amazing when you see how cramped and lightning fast the action can be with multiple people fighting each other. It's all quality.

I liked the actors. Plenty of good stuff (read: fighting and/or looking cool or evil) from Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian to name a few. Everyone did their job.

This is a very similar film to "Dredd". In fact, many would say that "Dredd" blatantly ripped off "The raid redemption" with the concept of making a multi-story building as the setting. Maybe it did to an extent, but "Dredd" is still a good film while "The raid redemption" is naturally more original. If I'd have to compare the two, I'd say that this one has definitely more action and the emphasis is on martial arts instead of guns and the surrounding fantasy world.

What I didn't like? I didn't always like the soundtrack. Sometimes it sounded too...generic and lazy. Perhaps there was a little too much action at times, if that can be considered a flaw in a mo

The Raid: Redemption fmovies. High Rating and Awards? People may be tricked for the first time because this movie comes from a very unusual country, Indonesia. It's not often we see action movie comes from this country. Furthermore, the casts also aren't well-known at all in the world but guess what, they're really giving a great show in this movie. Gareth Evans, a Welsh born writer/director/editor repeat his success creating action movie after several years ago releasing another action movie also made in Indonesia.

For me, the real superstar in this movie is Rama (Iko Uwais), who was introduced as a newbie special force in the team. Fantastic martial art movements, which is traditional martial art called Pencak Silat from Indonesia truly filled this movie with wowing watcher's experience. Fast moves, intense close combat and his knife play in combat successfully increased my adrenalin. The best part of Iko was when He's about to face several people alone in a hallway. That was obviously cool. I think Iko plays the part like Jason Statham (fighting) and Steven Seagal (with his knife) but only better. The Raid was rained with bloodbath. So it's wise to avoid bringing children to watch this movie.

The other character that stole my attention was this man called Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian). In my opinion, it'll be difficult to find this kind of man in this world. His expression and fighting style was stunning.

When I watch movies, I always intensely wait for the twists. The Raid doesn't give so many twists but it still has enough twist that improve the story. Still this is a nicely written story. Simple idea but creatively developed.

At first, I thought it'll be a one man show where Rama played the whole part of fighting till the end. But I was wrong. The Raid gives fair proportion to fighters in this movie. Rama isn't the only one that showed a great fight against the enemy in this movie. There're the sarge, Andi, the last cop in control room. The only thing that disturbed me a little bit is the original dialog which is Indonesian. I don't know but it's kinda awkward for me to hear the conversation in Indonesian although it's my native language. As I imagine, it may sounds better in English. Never mind, it's just me.

With only 1.1 million spent on this action movie, surprisingly give me such a great experience in cinema. Great movie. Great job!

9/10

OK. So there's not that much of a storyline to this movie. It's pretty much just 90 minutes of non-stop action, however....

The characters are sufficiently developed with a couple of twists in the story to keep it interesting....

But let's keep it real -- you're watching this movie because it's a simple, straight-forward, feast of totally immense and very well-made ACTION that's so good that you just don't want this movie to end. I could hardly believe I'd just been sitting in a cinema for 2 hours when this movie ended.

'The Raid' is by far one of, if not THE best action movies I have ever seen and is a definite MUST for anyone's movie collection!

My number one list action movie is The Matrix because it balanced the depth of the story with the action. Somewhere among the top list, there was also The Dark Knight for the same reason. However, when speaking only 'action', I used to choose a Hongkong movie, Flashpoint, starred by Donnie Yen. Before Flashpoint, I'll choose a Thailand movie, Ong Bak which launched Tony Jaa career internationally. Now, when I speak an action movie that speak for the action, I will choose an Indonesia movie, 'THE RAID', choreographed by Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhiyan and starred by them.

The problem with Donnie Yen's Flashpoint was you need to wait about one hour and fifteen minutes to get the action really start but when it started, it was really worth to wait. The fight between Donnie Yen and Collin Chou, inspired by MMA especially BJJ was so well choreographed and made audience hold their breath and asking "are this sh*t a real thing?". In Evans' latest, THE RAID, you won't need those one hour and fifteen minutes because he already made the audience gasps in the first fifteen minutes.

I wouldn't say a thing about Ong Bak because in my opinion, Merantau was more superior than Ong Bak. The problem with Merantau was Gareth was trying to bring audience to understand the culture of Silat first because showing the full action.You can said, Merantau was like Yamakasi doing for parkour while The Raid was the B-13 of silat.

It is useless to review this movie from the plot because there wasn't any significant plot. The plot was made only to bridge between one action scene to other action scene. But d*mn! Even with the weak dialog and cliché plot, Gareth executed it well so we, the audience, didn't have time to analyze this or that. What we know, we were flooded by f*cking awesome action movies from infiltration scene, massacre scene, and of course, martial art scenes when the characters have run out of bullets.

I remember when one of Merantau review said Merantau was Ong Bak when handled professionally. The same can be said with THE RAID. The Raid was Flashpoint with larger actions and handled professionally from the music, cinematography, and even the visual effect.

The music composed by Aria Prayogi and Fajar Yuskemal was like a combination between Hans Zimmer's Joker theme and Rage Against The Machine. It brought the audience immediately to the brutal tone of the movie. In some scenes, those music suddenly disappeared, leaving uneasiness to the audience. I wonder how Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park will interpret the scene to his score because Prayogi and Yuskemal score was perfect for the tone of this movie and it was really different with any Linkin Park score.

The sound effect, oh my, I hardly believe this is Indonesian movie. Even Hongkong movies are rarely have this good sound effect, You can differentiate between the bullet shot next to you to the bullet shot from the next room, The sound of knife slashing was so beautiful to listen and combined by the beautiful art of Silat, the scene was a masterpiece of a brutal dance of angel of death.

THE RAID has little visual effect but when they did, it was done amazingly and effectively. Frankly, prior to watch this movie, I was a little bit disappointed when I heard there will be slow-motion scene in the movie. However, Gareth proved me wrong. He was not Zack Snyder. The slow-motion was done only in one scene and perfectly executed which I hardly imagined how it should be done in other way.