Too often action movies fall into the trap of focusing too much on their spectacle. Before an idea for a story is even brainstormed there are elaborate plans for four or five action scenarios, and then writing a script just becomes a game of connect the dots, where you come up with excuses for your protagonist to run through the gauntlet of stunts that you’ve planned. The heroes of these tails are lantern-jawed and squinty-eyed, stalwart and brave, because that’s all you need to be in order to get involved in a series of action scenarios. Things like character and humanity get left by the wayside, and the big action scenes can often end up playing as empty and hollow as a result. Even the most breathtaking stunt doesn’t amount to much if you don’t care about the players involved. Or, at least, that’s what I used to think. Then a movie like The Raid: Redemption comes along that’s so much fun, story and character were the furthest things from my mind while I was watching it. The Raid is wall-to-wall action and little else. It’s structured less like a story with twists and turns, and more like a series of violent bullet points. Here, somehow, that’s enough. It’s more than enough. It’s so awesome.
I say that there’s no story here, but clearly that’s a lie. So what’s the story? Rama (Iko Uwais) is a member of some sort of tactical police squad. He’s a good man, and he’s insanely skilled at hand to hand combat. He and his crew of compatriots are faced with the task of bringing down a big time drug dealer named Tama (Ray Sahetapy). He’s arrogant, ruthless, and basically just a bad dude. He lives on the fifteenth story of an apartment building that’s populated entirely by criminals who are loyal to him. It’s the job of Rama and his fellow officers to infiltrate said building, battle their way up to the fifteenth floor, and take him out. The whole thing is pretty cut and dry, except for all of the shootouts, explosions, machete duels, and martial arts battles that complicate things along the way.
So what is it about this action that makes The Raid so much fun? Plain and simple, the fight choreography is worlds better than any other fight choreography I’ve ever seen, and the skill with which it is put on display, both by the actors and the filmmakers, is unparalleled in modern action films. Sure, there’s some B-movie cheesiness here. Rama has a pregnant wife who shows up for about two seconds at the beginning of the movie, just as a lame attempt at making us care when he’s put into peril. We get a long speech by a commander that takes place as the officers are being carted from their precinct to the apartment building, and it’s nothing more than cookie-cutter expositional dialogue. It felt like something out of a straight to DVD Steven Seagal movie. As a matter of fact, the first few minutes of this movie don’t make it look like it’s going to be any good at all. And then the fighting starts.
The big star of the film, Uwais, is an absolute wonder. The things that he can do with his hands and feet and whatever else is laying around are astounding. And he’s helped along by writer/director Gareth Evans, who gives him an increasingly cool string of situations to fight his way out of, and who shoots it all like action stuff should be shot. There’s none of that in too close, shaky cam nonsense in this movie. Evans and his fight choreographers came up with a beautiful ballet of violence, and he wants to show it off. He pulls his camera back, shoots his actors from head to toe, and really lets you take in each element of the physical storytelling that they’re performing with their fights. And calling it physical storytelling isn’t a stretch. These things go on for ten-fifteen minutes a piece, they’re as intricately choreographed as any dance performance the intellectual elite would blow a couple hundred bucks a ticket on, and the speed with which each step is performed will absolutely leave your jaw on the floor. Every time two opponents face off in this movie their interaction goes from a feeling out process, to a series of one upsmanships, to a game of human chess where it all comes down to who can be forced into making the first mistake. These fights could all stand alone as short films and be completely satisfying.
There’s a sequence where Uwais systematically slaughters about forty guys with a knife that is mind bending in the amount of planning and cooperation that it must have taken to pull off. There’s a three way machete duel that will have you bobbing and weaving in your seat, trying to avoid the blades, and yelling with excitement at every hair’s breadth near miss that happens over the course of the fight. There are so many near decapitations, so many tiny adjustments that narrowly avoid catastrophe, that you will be left breathless. And there’s a big, climactic fight with the bad guy’s main enforcer Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian) that is maybe the stupidest fight scene I’ve ever seen in my life. It goes on longer than is reasonable, and the characters involved take so much more punishment than you’re willing to swallow; but instead of making you tune out and roll your eyes, the thing just escalates itself to such a ridiculous level of joyful, insane violence that it made everyone in my theater go from a smirk, to a smile, to a grin, to a cheer, to a standing ovation over the course of its insanity. Who cares what you’re willing to believe when you’re having this much fun? Reality is stupid, The Raid is better.
As a matter of fact, there was more spontaneous applause during the showing of The Raid I attended than in any other movie screening I’ve ever been a part of. And I’ve seen a metric ton of highly anticipated franchise films at midnight. The fight scenes in this film are so long, and so well structured, that they just build and build in excitement. And, consequently, the noise in the crowd goes from an occasional “ooh” and “ah” in their opening minutes, to a general buzz of chatter somewhere in the middle, to outright clapping and hollering at the screen by the end of a fight. Four or five times the reaction was as if we had all just watched an olympic gymnast stick a landing, instead of a goon getting his back broken over a balcony railing, or his head rapid fire smashed against a wall. This is a damn fun moviegoing experience that people are going to be reliving in their living rooms for years, probably while drunk and karate chopping their furniture more often than not.
Heart-pounding, adrenaline-pumping, these are the clichés that will be used ad nauseum to describe The Raid. But that’s just because there’s no better way to describe what this movie does. There are several scenes where enough tension is built to get you squirming. In one, Tama is blowing a line of people’s heads off execution style. We don’t know how many bullets he has, and we have to sweat the situation out with the guy at the end of the line. In another, Rama is hiding behind a wall, and a bad guy is seeking him out by stabbing holes through the plaster with his machete. If Rama’s found out, that will be it for him and a few others. The anxiety of the situation is palpable, especially once the blade gets so close that it sinks into his cheek. Also, the score that accompanies everything is pulsing and frantic. At its best, it seems capable of driving a man insane. The camera work is not only competent, it’s flashy and inventive, without ever being distracting. At several points you’re left scratching your head, wondering how they pulled off a shot, but before you can get too hung up on it you’re off to the next thing. Every element of this movie works in service of making the fighting as exciting as possible, and the results are positively joy inducing. Just try not to go around punching people after you’ve seen it.
