So it's been a long 10
days, I’ve spent a fortune on action movie DVDs, typed hundreds of
words and sat through near enough 30 action movies to bring you an
action movie review everyday for the last 10 days leading up to the
Welsh premier of The Raid. It's been fun, frustrating and at times I
felt like giving up but I must soldier on so here it is folks, my
review for Gareth Evans' THE RAID....jpg)
Here's the thing about
action movies, they're stale, old hat and drenched in CGI these days,
The Avengers was good fun but for me it was another in a long line of
Hollywood cash cows but like I said it was good fun, The Raid however
is the kind of film you can't take your 12 year old brother too, you
couldn't take your mum to it or your gran, The Raid is a ferocious
action film that blows every other recent actioner out of the water.
The plot of the film is simple, A group of S.W.A.T guys have to enter
a tenement building to take down a crime lord, it could easily be
called clichéd but what the film does is take that plot idea and
twist it to epic heights of violence, gunfire and punch ups as the
swat team have to fight their way through floor after floor of
machete wielding criminals intent on taking down the team. It's like
the corridor fight in Oldboy where Oh-Dae Su has to take on all those
thugs with a hammer extended to 101 minutes and injected with
adrenaline.
Obviously there are
twists and turns in the plot but I’m not going to tell you them
because it would ruin the film for you.
The cast, most of them
non professionals, absolutely kill it, Iko Uwais who plays the lead,
Rama, is a definite talent to look out for, He previously starred in
Gareth Evans first film Merantu (which I have yet to see) and here in
The Raid shows off his unbelievable skills in the martial art of
Silat. He also has a screen presence, the same kind of presence that
Tony Ja, Jet Li, Jackie Chan and many other martial artists have, he
make you want to keep watching. He's actually pretty damn good in
this and it's only his second film. I hope to see more from Uwais in
the future. The other stand out character in the film is Mad Dog
played by Silat instructor Yayan Ruhian, Mad Dog is literally just
that, he's a mad dog, seemingly unstoppable and menacing as fuck,
seriously the guy was incredible, he also had some great lines of
dialogue like 'pulling a trigger is like ordering takeout' when
referring to how the cops use guns instead of fists. In the final
epic fight of the film, it's Mad Dog vs both Rama and his criminal
brother and it's an intense fight staged in a very small room.
When it comes to the
action of The Raid, it's all bullets, machete's, combat knives, fists
and feet, from the incredible ballistic gun battle in the building's
atrium to a brutal smack down in a drug lab, the action is ferocious,
visceral and bloody with the main goal being to stab someone, in fact
at the screening we went to, right in front of us was a woman, she
covered her face at every violent scene then walked out of the cinema
half way through, it was that violent that she couldn't handle it.
But it's not just the two scenes that I mentioned, oh no, there are
some incredible stunts on show in this film and shows that Indonesia
is just as good at producing high octane action as Japan, Hong Kong
and America, and this film has single handedly placed Indonesia on
the world cinema map for future projects. I am doing the film a
dis-justice by not mentioning all of the action but if I did it would
totally spoil the film as it needs to be seen to be believed.
Remember when Ong Bak came out and it was a relatively big hit thanks
to it's brutal violence and bone crunching fight scenes? The Raid
makes Ong Bak look like Balamory, this film is pretty much 101
minutes of pure action cinema and it's going to take something even
more incredible to top it.
The film also has this
weird vibe about it, it almost seemed like it could have come from
John Carpenter, throughout the film all I was thinking was I wonder
when Snake Plisskin is going to show up, and when the Q&A
started, Director Gareth Evans even said that he was influenced by
Assault On Precinct 13 and Escape From New York, which to me makes
the film even more astounding as he's borrowing from one of the best.
My only problem with the film is that it was filmed in Indonesian,
not that I had trouble reading the subtitles but because it's ripe
from an English language remake which makes me sad because some films
should be left as they are and never remade because believe me, if
this was to be remade, it wouldn't work because of the amount of
violence and action, it wouldn't work because it would have to be
toned down, it would have a big named actor and would not utilize the
martial arts format for the fight scenes unless they cast someone
like Scott Adkins or Cung Le in the roles. But for now, The Raid is
the closest thing to pure action perfection, not a beat skipped, just
down and dirty brutal violence, just the way action films should
be....and it was made for $1mil, a remake would probably cost
$25-30mil. Gareth Evans has made one of the greatest action films of
my generation and probably one of the greatest action films of all
time that can easily take it's place next to game changers like Enter
The Dragon, Die Hard and First Blood as defining films of their
decades.
Finally the score is
unreal, Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda teamed up with Joe Trapanese to
give the film an eclectic score featuring a mixture of Techno, Hip
Hop, Dubstep and Metal which really kicks ass when you see it in the
film as the music is used to brilliant effect to amp up the action
and the dramatic scenes. Credit where credit is due as this has one
of the best modern cinematic scores i've heard for a film in this
genre. It also has some influences from John Carpenter such as synth
beats which is probably why I kept thinking about Escape From NY.
So to finish my review
and our 10 Days Of Mayhem series, The Raid is a blisteringly
brilliant piece of action cinema, well acted, very well directed with
some great editing, again by Gareth Evans, a superb score and some of
the most brutal scenes of screen violence since John Woo gave us the
final 40 minutes of Hard Boiled, The Raid is pure action at it's best
and one film I intend on revisiting as soon as the DVD or Blu Ray
comes out. This truly is an incredible film, if you like action and
violence then this film is for you, don't be one of those douche bags
who says that they're not watching it because it's subtitled, do your
self a favour and grow some balls, you will have no idea what you are
missing. The Raid is In-Fuckin'-Credible and one of the best action
films ever made. If I could give it more stars I would but The Raid
gets the full 5 star treatment from Cine-Apocalypse....
Oh and Gareth Evans is
already preparing The Raid 2 to start filming in January....
No comments:
Post a Comment