Heavy on action and violence and very light on plot, The Raid: Redemption is not a film for everyone but if you are into non-stop martial arts, gun fights and melee weapon fights then you have most definitely come to the right place.

The story, such as it is, follows 20 elite SWAT team members carrying out a raid on a tenement building in Jakarta, Indonesia run by a ruthless drug lord, Tama (Ray Sahetapy), and which has been turned into a criminal safe house so  infested  that even the police generally give it a wide berth. The team has to take the building floor by floor to eliminate spotters and guards along the way to have a hope of surviving. All that goes to hell when they get to the 6th floor and a child spotter hits the alarm. The residents of the building, and its sniper neighbors, become activated as Tama tells them over the intercom that whoever kills the cops will get to stay rent free for life and the team find themselves trapped between attackers from above and below. That the raid might not be so legal or that one of the team members might have a connection to one of Tama’s lieutenants is hinted at early but not paid off until the cast is thinned out a little, but even with the minor intrigues, the meat and potatoes from the moment the guns start firing is fighting to survive however the team can. Sadly, for a great many of them, they simply can’t.

In a genre known for being light on plot, character development and storytelling, The Raid more or less abandons the pretense of this being about anything other than fighting and violence and gives the audience all they could ask for. As a film, the closest real analogue can only be found in porn. The Raid is the porn of action movies. Rest assured, however, this is not late night Cinemax soft-core porn but rather the hard stuff that you get on the deepest, darkest parts of the internet that maybe makes you feel a bit weird for being into. This might sound like a criticism but for the fan of action, particularly well choreographed and photographed martial arts and gun fights, the Raid has no peer.

I really cannot overstate how incredible the fighting is in this movie. The martial arts on display is pencak silat, an Indonesian art that is not dissimilar in many respects to Okinawan karate but which places emphasis on weapons like machetes, clubs and kriss daggers. The flow of the fights is very fast and the intention is never in question. Every attack launched looks like it is meant to end the fight and in some cases it does just that. The intensity of the fights is pretty incredible and the brutality and gore that results is entirely appropriate.

The Raid never really flirts with anything even acquainted with realism, but that is not to say that the fights aren’t generally practical. Not to belabor the point above, but in a lot of martial arts movies you end up with fighting that looks cool and impressive but carries no real weight to it and feels more like a stage exhibition than high stakes fighting. There is certainly a place for that and for wire fu and all of those things but I found the more grounded action in the Raid to be very refreshing. People continue fighting long after they should have fallen down and occasionally the aerial work gets a little out of hand but the Raid offers up fighting that is generally plausible, makes sense and the fighters are suitably beaten up afterward. This gives it a very visceral feel and raises the stakes for the fighters considerably.

Also raising the stakes is the fact that pretty much any character can die at any time in what would have been a normal hero wins scenario in most action films. The characters in this movie, both good and bad, do not fuck around and when there is the opportunity to kill an opponent they do so immediately. This keeps you off balance as an audience member because there are no guarantee that your favorite character is going to survive until the end. This also aids in the feeling of realism in terms of the stakes because, despite their martial prowess, the characters are clearly not unkillable supermen.

The direction and cinematography in this film is pretty incredible. The camera is not always static during the action scenes and not only moves to give the audience the best view of the action but also moves with the flow of the fights to augment the kinetic motion which serves to pull the audience into the fight with the characters. This gives the feeling that you are right there in the thick of it which clearly amps up the overall feelings of excitement. As mentioned, the choreography is some of the best I have ever seen and helps to keep the audience from going numb from the constant violence playing out on screen. A movie like this could easily overdo it and tire audience early on but The Raid keeps you riveted and excited fight after fight. When all bets are off from an outcome standpoint, this tension is more easily maintained and adds to the over all investment by the viewer.

The performances are generally pretty great. It is hard to judge on the merit of the straight acting as there isn’t much of that to judge but from the standpoint of carrying out the action in a convincing and exciting way, the cast is phenomenal. Iko Uwais, who plays the main character Rama, is the clear standout which is no surprise given that he choreographed the fights in the first place. Yayan Ruhian who plays Tama’s right hand psychopath Mad Dog is also incredible in his fight scenes. Everyone in the picture handles their fights very well, though and there was no one who looked unskilled or out of place.

Conclusion [9.0 out of 10]

The Raid: Redemption is not for everyone. I really can’t stress that enough. If you don’t like martial arts movies then you need to stay far, far away from this movie. If you don’t like action movies then don’t see this. If you can’t accept a movie that relies on action to tell its story as opposed to fleshed out characters and dialogue then it will not be for you. If, however, you are a fan of action in general and martial arts in particular and are able to accept it for its own sake then you would be hard pressed to find anything better.