I just saw this movie The Raid: Redemption, which has kind of a silly title (nothing and no one gets redeemed), but is still pretty badass, if you like this kind of flick.
The plot is simply an elite team of police storming a fortress like apartment complex in a slum. Things go bad. That’s pretty much it, though there are a couple of twists I won’t spoil.
The action starts about 2 minutes into the movie and doesn’t stop until 2 minutes before the credits. It is insanely gory and violent. The martial art used is something called Silat, which wikipedia informs me is a generic term for “martial arts” in SE Asia. Lost of knives and machetes, as well as fully automatic rifles.
It’s pretty well acted and directed for this kind of flick. (Interestingly enough although it takes place in Indonesia, is in an Indonesian language, and has an Indonesian cast, the director is from Wales.) The young lead is convincing and charismatic. There are some typical martial arts movie cliches: People fight the good guy–and sometimes the bad guy–one at a time instead of dogpiling him, people bounce back from blows that would require months of hospital time and rehab, some of the moves seem unrealistically flamboyant, etc. But if you aren’t bothered by this, it’s really well done. Recommended for fans of early John Woo, or, more accurately, Ringo Lam. Good score too, kind of reminiscent of late 80’s industrial music, with a little hip-hop thrown in.
It was written up in the NY Times Sunday Magazine as a clear sign that America has been passed by in action movies, from our heyday of Willis, Stallone and Ahnuld. Sounds like…fun, in an insanely gory sort of way.
I heard ads for this on the radio (on the news-radio station, which was kind of weird). The ads made it sound ridiculously violent…based on the OP’s review, I guess the ads were accurate, at least.
Yeah, most of the fights are many-on-one involving blades. The one is intent on incapacitating the many as quickly as possible and everything is shown on screen. Lots of slicing, stabbing, joint breaking, shooting, etc.
There’s never really any cartoonishness to it, the only nod being that the main good guys and main bad guys show a typical superhuman tolerance to pain and joint destruction. The average fight between any two particular people is about 3 seconds long (ignoring the “boss fights” which do go on for more stereotypical lengths).
In convincing my wife to go see it with me, I relied on a 2 minute clip available online demonstrating the amazing choreography. Unfortunately, that 2 minute clip is about the only fight that isn’t full of blood.
Saw it tonight while on biz in LA. Loved it. The fights are BRUTAL and, considering how crazy they get, there are very few camera cuts, which are so popular in american movies to mask the fact that the action is fake.
Very few gun battles. TONS of knife fights and insanity. It is stylized, but not to the extreme. Most of it is believable, other than the way the guys shrug off repeated knockout blows. There are some REALLY kick ass deaths in this thing and they happen fast without drama like when one guy gets tackled and in the process thrown out the window on the 8th floor. Doesn’t sound like much but looks badass in motion.
The story is irrelevant. See this movie if you like to see badass fightery, especially knife fights. So much stabbing and slicing in here it’s hard to keep track.
ETA: I imagine there were alot of injuries on set during the filming of these fight scenes. Probably alot of bruised ribs and torn ligaments.
I saw it yesterday after work. Loved it! It was so loaded with suspense I was continually squirming in my seat, often wanting to shout at the screen to “LOOK OUT!” “LOOK UP!” “BE QUIET, THEY’LL HEAR YOU!” “BEHIND YOU!” which of course I didn’t. Though it probably wouldn’t have mattered since there was only one other person in the theater. I’ve never seen a movie in the theater that kept my adreneline level so high from start to finish.
The lead henchman, “Mad Dog,” is outstanding as a fighter and a scary calm badass, even though he’s pretty much a non-entity until halfway through the film.
I have a collection of a couple hundred Hong Kong, Chinese, Tiwanese, Japanese & Korean martial arts movies. In action, violence & suspense, this makes most of them pale. I can’t wait to see what the director does next.
Oddly enough, I really dislike torture horror, but I like brutal action movies. Seeing someone strapped to a chair and tortured for an hour doesn’t do anything for me, but seeing high intensity fight scenes works. That said…
No, not a family movie at all. The Raid is extremely gritty and brutal, worlds away from Wuxia movies like Crouching Tiger or House of Flying daggers. The closest thing i can think of is Old Ringo Lam movies like Full Contact, but this is a lot faster and more stripped down.
Damn you, Equipoise! It’s prolly gonna be a few months before I can see this, as it doesn’t look likely to come to the Vegas market, and now I’m practically drooling with anticipation!
I too have many, many non-Hollywood action flicks. Over the last 15 years, they make most Hollywood stuff pale in comparison. Glad to know I’m not the only one here who likes them.
Googling the full title–The Raid: Redemption–will get you a red band trailer that’ll give you a pretty good idea what the movie is about. Probably NSFW due to violence.
They are doing a very slow, careful roll-out to either build word of mouth, or to not spend a lot of money if it fails. According to IMDB it is only on 14 screens in the US at the moment.
