Bloody hell. Some films define a genre. And for martial arts, action and cult classics, The Raid is it. It’s a shot of pure, uncut ass-kick into your veins. It’s the bright, brutal beauty of a Jackson Pollock painted in blood. It’s what Tarantino wanted Grindhouse to be, and what every martial arts film will want to be from now on. It’s a sadistic cinematic orgasm.
Welsh director Gareth Evans couldn’t have a more straightforward story for his Indonesian flick. Jakarta’s local police have planned a raid of a 15-story apartment block owned by terrifying crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy), that houses his indebted lowlifes and narcotics laboratories. The plan is videogame simple: storm the building, move up through the levels, arrest the game boss, home in time for tea and bridge. Through brilliantly economic direction, this is established within ten minutes; within 15, the SWAT team find themselves under attack from a never-ending stream of vicious criminals.
And it’s awesome.
Martial arts, swords, hand-guns, rifles, machetes, explosives, clubs, knives, broken glass, chains, doorframes and the odd fridge are used in a never-ending stream of fights that are brutal, imaginative, stunningly choreographed, and ooze back-breaking, skull-crushing, blood-splattering deliciousness. As the surviving policemen rise through the increasingly dangerous apartment floors, the fights increase in their velocity and viciousness. To highlight the escalating action, Linkin Park’s Mike Shinodah provides an ominous, electrifying pulse of a score that slowly shudders through the painfully tense moments before surging with irresistible adrenaline.
In the midst of this frenetic, claustrophobic and hard-hitting action, there are innumerable moments of sheer beauty. Many come courtesy of the direction of Evans, whose composition and understanding of tension is simply breathtaking. As gun-baring shadows dance across against walls and men wait to discover how (not if) they’ll be slaughtered, the terror is relentless.
The other source of magnificence is the film’s cast, with star turns from Iko Uwais as an enigmatic cop and Yayan Ruhian as Tama’s rabid hitman. Their fights are glorious, balletic demonstrations of Silat martial art, with choreography so creative, so complex, so captivating that they’re simply breathtaking.
So, that’s The Raid. You’ll kick yourself - in slow motion, and with gratuitous blood loss, of course - if you don’t see it.