The Raid

Logline: A SWAT team becomes trapped in a tenement run by a ruthless mobster and his army of killers and thugs.

Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Ananda George, Ray Sahetapy

Directed by: Gareth Evans

I will admit that kung-fu movies have never been my forte, but I've been waiting for this movie since last August when I read its plot synopsis on the TIFF list. I actually had no idea that it was a kung-fu movie until the trailers were released. I was still interested & it was followed by a lot of buzz upon release, making me even more interested.

So. The Raid. Did it live up to the hype?

Summary

Tama Riyada is a brutal crime lord who effortlessly kills without remorse. Tama has two men that he holds close - Andi the brains and Mad Dog the crazy hitman. He runs a building that tenants many other criminals that all obey his commands. This building is unanimously known as untouchable.

Enter SWAT. A team of about 15 or so drive up to the building and attempt to take it over. Our films protag is named Rama, a rookie SWAT member who shouldn't have been raiding in such an important task this early in his career. The team bursts in and clears their way to the 6th floor without any problems. When they get there, Tama is alerted and he begins watching surveillance through cameras placed all over the building. The SWAT team is trapped. Criminals are rising from the lower levels and criminals are descending from the top floors. It is learned, through the team's panic, that backup will not be called as this is a mission off-the-books and the team is all alone.

Intense.

Review

The Raid is everything I wanted it to be. Coming from an indie director without much of a name, the camera work was artsy and fresh. The soundtrack was brilliant and almost every scene meant something. For a movie with 1h 41mins, it goes by really quickly due to the fact that the movie rarely ever floats. It's filled with action and the dialogue constantly advances the plot. 

There is a twist near the end that makes the raid personal for Rama and in doing so, makes the movie even that much better. I won't reveal the twist, but it leaves room for a sequel. If they plan on making one, I can't wait.

Topic of the Day

This worked due to pacing and location.

This movie never floats. By that I mean there is never a point in time where I wanted to pick up my tablet and browse the internet while I waited for something to happen. So many movies think it's okay to float in order to add runtime. This one never did that. Why? Location.

Look at location movies in the past that have worked. Jurassic Park, Alien, Phone Booth, etc. They worked because there was literally NO WAY OUT. Imagine being stuck on an island with no escape filled with carnivorous dinosaurs on the loose. Imagine being stuck on another planet in a space ship that has a creepy & malignant alien predator on it. Imagine being stuck in a phone booth with a sniper constantly having his crosshairs on your forehead preventing any escape. Imagine being trapped on the 6th floor of a huge building with the town's biggest crime lord ordering his goons from the floors above and below you to leave no man alive. Get where I'm goin' with this? Location can be used to make a movie intense for the entire time. The audience knows the stakes right from the beginning of the plot - escape or suffer a dreadful death. By having the SWAT team placed in this location it creates a constantly flow of things happening. The key to location movies is having no route of escape. Location allowed for this movie to be paced just right. Even the dialogue scenes are tense because in such a hostile environment anything could happen. However, the dialogue did provide a breath of fresh air from the action and it always kept the film moving forward.

Consensus

Not sure of what to think knowing that this was a kung-fu movie, I went into this with an open mind. I still felt the hype I created for myself last summer though - and it lived up to every bit of it. The only criticism I had was the lack of character development. It does great to eliminate a lot of the SWAT team early in order to focus on a core group of people, but there wasn't much backstory to go along with it. I forgive the makers none-the-less because I thoroughly enjoyed watching regardless.

The Raid is a fast paced, well directed, well acted, and well plotted action/location hidden gem of a movie. The action stops to breathe with dialogue that advances the plot and then dives right back in to greatly choreographed fight scenes with meaning behind them. It was everything I had hoped for and would gladly watch it again.

8/10