The Raid did have the grittiness of Assault on Precinct 13. The plot was similar too.
There were crucial plot twists in this? :) I can count maybe one thing that actually happened in this movie. Beyond, of course, dudes punching each other. And even if you cared about that one thing, you could see it coming from a mile away.
To be fair, I don’t care much for straight-up martial arts movies. That’s clearly what The Raid is: a thin premise for a bunch of fight scenes. Even in Assault on Precinct 13, which I seem to recall was very much like a Western – cowboys hold the fort against an onslaught of Indians, right? – the scenes of dudes pouring into the windows were mainly connective tissue.
However, The Raid consists almost solely of its fights, with any character stuff as gruel thin connective tissue. It has none of the character that John Carpenter put into his early movies, which Neil Marshall then imitated to varying degrees of success. Just as The Descent might be one of the best John Carpenter movies John Carpenter never made, Doomsday might be the worst John Carpenter movies John Carpenter never made. And the less said about Centurion, the better. Ugh.
-Tom
To be fair, those fight scenes are awesome - fist, gun, knife, machete, florescent light tube, tonfa, filing cabinet, live badger and shark (there are no live badger and shark fights). Its like the hammer hallway fight in Old Boy - only for an hour and a half. How you feel the prospect of that will probably determine if you should go see The Raid.
Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, the fight choreographers (Ruhian also plays the drug lord’s most vicious fighter and sweater of the most ferocious sweat), create some of the most complicated, intricate and visceral fight scenes I’ve ever seen. A simple thing, but something that helps immensely is that rather than Bourne-like, too close and shakey hand cam style, the director actually shows the fighting. It isn’t a static camera, the camera is as hyperkenitic as the rest of the movie, it just pulls back enough so the violence makes sense.
Yeah, I gotta disagree with you, Tom. There’s at least three characters motivated by knowing stuff that other people don’t, and by the end of the movie you find out exactly what those things are. I agree it was all stuff you could see coming…but that’s about 2.5 more plot twists than this kind of movie usually gets.
Assault on Precinct 13 is very much like a Western–but it’s also a horror movie. The scenes of dudes pouring into the windows aren’t just connective tissue–it’s very much the invocation of, you know, the other. The crawling horde.
I get this isn’t your thing but you’re being a bit ungenerous: it’d be like if you were watching a Howard Hawks Western and you said all the shots of the landscape were filler.
Not that I know what the political landscape of Malaysia is like in any way whatsoever, but The Raid feels like a movie that plays off fears of corruption being so firmly entrenched, it’s unstoppable. Nobody’s going to mistake it for The Conformist anytime soon or anything, but…I feel like there’s something there.
Actually, this is why I used the comparison to Assault on Precinct 13: the characterization for everybody in that is also about an inch deep. (The Thing too, now that I think about it.) But it’s satisfying, and I thought it worked here, too.
I’m not even going to harp on this digression because I endorse it so wholeheartedly. Why is it we can agree about Doomsday but we can’t about The Raid? I think it’s because you don’t like straight-up martial arts movies enough to pick the good from the bad…which is totally fine, but I don’t want you scaring off people who’d actually like to see a really good movie about people kicking one another in the head.
My point is that the fights are the substance of The Raid. If you want to see fight scenes, that’s cool and you’ll certainly get what you want. The comparison to Assault on Precinct 13 would be apt if Carpenter had focused primarily on scenes of dudes jumping into windows. But he didn’t. He used those to connect other more meaningful scenes*. I felt The Raid was missing those other more meaningful scenes.
To me, the gold standard for martial arts movies, which I don’t normally care for, is Crouching Tiger, where every fight was a) amazing, b) character development, and c) distinct. Granted, it’s a bit unfair to compare a young new Welsh director and his Indonesian production with Ang Lee in top form after literally decades of success. But I’ll gladly concede that I’ve been spoiled.
And I’m not the least bit surprised that the henchman with 20,000 hit points was the fight choreographer. That guy was utterly amazing. I hope someone puts him in a movie someday that’s more than an extended demo reel. :)
-Tom
- Not that I really remember any of them, as I haven’t seen the original in many many years.
That’s perfect!
Aww poor Imogen Poots…ahem…I mean Centurion. It’s a bad movie I know, but still I liked it a bit more then you (maybe because I hadn’t yet seen “The eagle”). I mean Imogen Poots is no Jamie Bell ;)
I do like my schlocky kung fu movies, so it seems I’m going to have to check this one out. Even if it’s only for “fans of the genre” unlike Tom.
As I’ve mentioned, that fight was an homage to 70’s and 80’s Kung Fu movies. That it goes on for a long time is the point. Most great Kung Fu movies end with two heroes locked in an epic battle against a white-eyebrowed killer (or tiny and sweaty as in this case).
Also, Yayan Ruhian is a 43 year old five foot nothing Indonesian Kung Fu instructor*, that fight wasn’t a demo reel, it was, as his character says, “What I do.”
I’m sure he will be able to find more work, but I don’t see him becoming the next Jet Li or Jackie Chan. The next Yuen Woo-Ping if we are lucky.
*Bonus IMDB fact -
Ruhian is also known as an instructor of an inner breathing technique designed to condition of the body to withstand any impact. In 1988, he began teaching at Perguruan Silat Tenaga Dasar Indonesia (Inner Breathing Technique Silat School in Indonesia).
badass
Goin’ tonight, and I can’t wait. Doug Benson talked it up on Doug Loves Movies, and I’m one of those people that consider a one-star Ebert review to be an indication of greatness.
I don’t know if Tom didn’t see the trailer (but if you didn’t, what drew you to the movie?), but if you saw the trailer and want that, you will get it, and it will be awesome.
I have been irked lately about the disconnect between front page comment posts and forum threads, but I, too, drew a comparison to Oldboy’s “hallway fight”. Not because this movie has a goddamned thing to do with Oldboy (or because that fight scene was trying to do anything that these fight scenes are trying to do) but because the The Raid’s “hallway fight” so over the top amazing that it should claim ownership of that phrase from now on.
The Raid was awesome. The tagline provided all the characterization I wanted:
1 Ruthless Crime Lord. 20 Elite Cops. 30 Floors of Chaos.
The movie delivered on its promise and then some. Well excepting that it was only 15 floors.
As usual, I did not see the trailer. All I knew is that it was a foreign language action movie.
-Tom
Man, that was one big-ass pile of cinematic red meat. Loved it. It is to violence what Singin’ In The Rain is to dancing.
I really want to give someone money to see this, sadly here in the middle of nowhere it’s not happening.
They should use this on the DVD Cover.
I hope that for the DVD release they add back the floors that got cut.
This movie is fucking awesome.
See it folks. See it.
I thought this was pretty good! It was no Hard Boiled, but what is?
I couldn’t help overthinking it though:
spoilers for The Raid: Redemption. No spoilers for what was redeemed, except perhaps it was a coupon or some bottles.
[spoiler]1. The crime lord made a huge misstep. He offered the tenants lifetime free rent if they would help wipe out the cops. He should have offered one or two years rent free. What is the incentive for the tenants to pitch in the next time another gang or SWAT team attacks? More lifetime free rent? Also, his position could have been hardened if he had engaged in community outreach. Like in City of God, he could have employed local kids as spotters.
1a. Many of the units were squalid, but the square footage of each unit was admirable. I can see why the tenants wanted to defend their tenement. (This section of Jakarta is not exactly where and How The Other Half Lives. Some of the apartments here even had running water!)
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If the briefing in the SWAT van was the first briefing on the target that the SWAT team received, the sergeant kind of deserved to have his team wiped out. If there were other briefings (Rama alludes to a perp org chart when he was reunited with his brothers), they were woefully scant. I get that the whole thing was kind of last minute, and the Lieutenant wasn’t even expecting the SWAT team to show up. But even so.
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My friends and I were dumbfounded when the “old man” with his “sick wife” turned out to be exactly as described. We were so sure that the old man would actually be a chief henchman, or that there was no sick wife. In this suspicious day and age, this qualifies as a plot twist.
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The drivers of the SWAT van had never seen Aliens. You’ve got to protect your dropship!
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The hallway fight was awesome. Punch punch block punch slice slice stab stab stab. The criminals coming in as reinforcements might not have had medical training, but they missed out on helping their fallen comrades. Many of the wounded were merely suffering knife wounds. They could have at least choked out: “Yep, there’s two of them, one wounded so badly he couldn’t walk, and they went in that door and have yet to come out.”
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Which henchman was Mad Dog and which henchman was the smart one that could barely keep Mad Dog in check? Both the older long-haired guy and the cop’s brother were pretty smart and pretty crazy.
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I really did like the verbal sparring between the crime lord and Lieutenant Borgnine. For want of a bullet, the crimelord was going to get a trusted member of the police to commit murder-suicide. That’s Kevin-Spacey-in-Seven shit right there.
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Many of my criticisms of the plot–lack of communication among the criminals, a tendency for situations to spiral into violence, lack of forethought from everyone–could be explained away as cultural differences. The average Welshman does not think as we do.[/spoiler]
This was indeed the most badass kick-punch-chop-stab-twist-shoot movie I have ever seen, and I do mean ever. If you have ever enjoyed any martial arts movie, you should definitely see this.
I really enjoyed this one as well. Great pace, terrific fights, felt super-kinetic.
I dig the action in movies like Ong-Bak or Revenge of the Warrior, but I always hate the non-fight parts because the plots are as ridiculous as the acting. Tony Jaa is an impressive athlete, but I tend to alternate between rolling my eyes or laughing whenever it’s not about delivering punches.
The Raid kept it to an absolute minimum - it takes two minutes to get to the point where they’re on their way to the house. No time wasted. From then on it’s mostly action with a few tolerably brief breaks. Thought the acting was fine, too. The villain? Superb.
I hope the DVD includes the original version/audio of the movie. I would have preferred watching the original version with subtitles because the brief part you get to hear in the trailer–the crime lord giving his little speech–certainly sound way less awesome and chilling in the dubbed version.
Mad Dog spoiler
Mad Dog is the guy that killed the sergeant and had to face Andy and Rama in the last fight scene. Andy (Rama’s brother) was supposed to be the smart guy. I’ll give you that: It wasn’t until Andy got ahold of Rama that I could tell which of them was supposed to be who. And for a while I thought the leader of the machete gang was Mad Dog due to the crazy look he had.