The Raid: Redemption

Starring: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno, Ray Sahetapy, Donny Alamsyah
Directed by: Gareth Evans
Rating: R
Genre: Action, Thriller
2012

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: In Indonesia, an elite police team gets trapped inside an apartment building controlled by a ruthless mobster.

Review:

Tim: I've heard about the Indonesian film, The Raid: Redemption for years before I finally got around to seeing it. I probably didn't love it as much as many people who wrote about it, but I still thoroughly enjoyed this wall-to-wall action movie. It throws some insane stunts and amazing choreographed fights at us. For people who enjoy their action movies heavy on the action, this film is for you.

Gareth Evans' film is almost exclusively about the action. Anyone who talks about this film will focus on that. At the beginning of the film, we get a few quiet moments to establish the characters and the setting, but almost immediately afterwards, the mayhem starts. It doesn't really let up until the end of the movie. Besides the final scene, there's only a small handful of character development scenes. Those scenes are good, but this movie obviously prioritizes the action and intensity.

The action sequences are (as you might expect), excellent. We get so many throughout this film. There's a number of gunfights with quite a bit of firepower. There's scenes with knives, axes, and a ton of hand-to-hand (and foot-to-foot) combat. There's gritty violence and a few gruesome sequences. Quite frankly, it's a lot of action. While watching it, I was impressed and engaged with the action. This movie's action is often depicted as brutal. There's a certain finesse to some of the choreography, but this is a bloody, dirty, all out brawl. The movie embraces that level of violence and revels in it. There is a great deal of death and destruction in this film.

Iko Uwais deserves a great deal of praise for his protagonist role. He's the most relatable in the film and delivers some of the best action sequences. He certainly appears to be the real deal and his physicality was so impressive. The main cast all get their moments to shine, but Uwais is certainly the star of this film. Yayan Ruhian gave a remarkable performance as well. His antagonist role is perfect and he engages in some jaw-dropping fight scenes. The rest of the cast are strong, but these two are superb.

Now, as much as I enjoyed this movie, I do need to clarify why I think it's a bit overrated. The action scenes are incredible, there's no doubt about it. However, this movie clearly focuses nearly all of its attention on that. The character development scenes are minimal. That was intentional, but it does give the film a sense of it being mostly flash and style and not enough substance. There's serious plot holes throughout the movie. There's so many things that are left unexplained that you end up scratching your head. I'm still not entirely sure why this mobster runs an apartment building filled with so many of his henchmen, drug addicts, and I guess a few regular people, too? That wasn't properly explained. I understand the situation with the police team infiltrating the building, but it seems odd that no reinforcements would come, given the amount of ammunition shot off. Even if the main police force wasn't aware of the raid, it seems obvious that they would be alerted at some point after all hell breaks loose. Too many of the decisions in this film were made to showcase the action, and logic and character development fell by the wayside. The reason I cared about Uwais' character is because he was cool and could fight well. The family stuff felt perfunctory. They really did the minimum possible outside of the fight scenes. That creates amazing action moments, but it doesn't make a great movie.

I don't want to be too critical here, because The Raid: Redemption is a major achievement. The budget couldn't have been that much, and director Gareth Evans creates something that rivals and surpasses many of the action movies Hollywood produces. That's something to celebrate. The action and fight scenes here are exciting and thrilling. This is a really good movie.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 7.5



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The Raid 2