After four days of dramatic festival films at Sundance, there was really only one way to wrap up the entire experience: with a straight shot to the heart of pure adrenaline. The Raid is a film that's been on every body's lips since Toronto last year, with some proclaiming it to be the greatest action movie of the last decade. Talk like that is best taken with a heavy dose of cynicism. It's easy to get excited during film festivals over movies that probably aren't that great. However over the course of the months in between, the praise for The Raid never died down. In fact, it only got louder, more deafening, and more certain. And now you can add one more voice to the growing chorus.
If you never got to see Merantau, director Gareth Evans' crazy introduction to the insane Indonesian martial art known as Pencak Silat, then do yourself a favor and check it out first as a primer. The Raid, which also stars that films' breakout Iko Uwais, take it's intense action and decides that taking time for a breather is no longer a requirement. There's scarcely a moment in The Raid where some death defying act isn't taking place, yet Evans leaves barely enough room for a plot that gives you a reason to care who makes it out with all their bones intact.
The film is basically one long live-action video game, where a SWAT Team mounting a desperate assault against a heavily fortified Jakarta high rise building, owned and operated by the cruel drug lord, Tama. Think of Tama as the game's end boss, with each floor another stage of the game which must be conquered through any means necessary, whether that's bloody shootouts with armed goons, or engaging in breakneck hand-to-hand combat with fighters so fast they make Jet Li look like he's standing still. We're introduced early on to Rama(Uwais), a member of the squad who has his own motivations for going in, like rescuing his brother who is holed up deep inside. To get him out, he'll need to defeat Tama's vile henchman, one of whom is basically a mad dog of furious feet and fists who destroys everything in his path. He's like Bolo Yeung, only faster and far more brutal. When he and Rama finally meet in what is literally ten minutes of bone crunching, heart stopping warfare, it is a thing of deranged beauty. The beauty of The Raid stretches beyond it's incredible pace, but in the dynamic way Evans captures the action. To describe how Silat is presented in the film, it's almost like a blend of Tony Jaa's muay thai style, full of hard knees and elbow striking, with the acrobatics of parkour. Only, Evans has masterfully combined these balletic elements with a serious amount of gun play, that makes for a totally unique, mind blowing experience. It's just rare that we get a martial arts flick this fast paced and creatively choreographed. If District B13 is the high water mark for recent action brawlers, and to me it is, then The Raid is a notch above even that. Evans never shies away from the violence even for a moment, from splattery up close head shots to guys getting their backs broken over metal guardrails. The amount of devastation inflicted on the human body in this flick is both tough to stomach and yet exhilarating. You can't help wondering what the medical budget was like on set, and how many stuntmen spent their evenings in the ICU. It's impossible to turn away for fear you'll miss something you're likely never to see again. At least not until The Raid 2(let's hope!!).
Perhaps adding to the films' charms is the obvious low budget look and feel. It doesn't have the slickness of some of the higher end action movies we get nowadays, even those from Japan and Thailand. That grittiness adds a realness which puts you right in the thick of the action. Two movies in, and it can honestly be said that the combination of Evans and Uwais is arguably the best on the action block, so everyone else might want to step aside lest they catch a swift kick to the mush.
