Ultimately, “The Raid” is the “Grease” of action pictures, only “Grease” has more plot. An Indonesian film, it was shot in the country and is spoken in the language - yes, that means subtitles. It is written, directed and edited by Gareth Huw Evans, whose name you may notice has a distinctly Welsh ring to it. Perhaps that’s because Evans is indeed Welsh, having been born and bred in the Cynon Valley village of Hirwaun and having graduated from the University of Glamorgan in Rhondda Cynon Taf with an MA in Scriptwriting for Film and Television. All I can say about that is this: who would have guessed that the next John Woo would be a Welshman?
Deep in the heart of the Indonesian capital of Jakarta stands a derelict apartment building, the 15 storeys of which harbour thieves, drug dealers, gangsters and murderers. The building is overseen by Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy, who spends much of the film in a wife-beater, like a villainous John McClane), a sadistic druglord brandishing the patience of a snake and the bloodlust of a great white. Tenants of the building are armed to the teeth, and neither Tama’s rivals nor the increasingly corrupt police force would dare step foot on its not-so-welcoming welcome mat.
That is, until a 20-man SWAT team is tasked with storming the structure, arresting its inhabitants and taking down Tama once and for all. Led by the determined Sergeant Jaka (Joe Taslim) and under the guidance of Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno), a man of questionable intent, the mission gets off to a successful start, the team sneakily apprehending the tenants of the first few floors with no bullets fired and no alarms raised. And then they get to the sixth floor, where a whole boxful of hell breaks loose and spirals wildly, rivetingly out of control.
A young inhabitant of the building catches sight of the team, evades their capture and alerts Tama via the building’s intercom system of their uninvited presence. The building is put on lockdown. Tama, closely observing live CCTV feeds from the top floor, calmly announces over the intercom that a SWAT team has invaded their precious fortress, and informs all residents that those who successfully exterminate the “infestation” will be granted free rent. “Now go to work,” orders Tama into his microphone. “And please, enjoy yourself.”
And thus begins a ballet of bloodshed, a circus of savagery and a myriad of ultraviolent mayhem. A whole army of senseless thugs vacate their rooms, armed with knives, machetes, AK-47s and an unquenchable thirst for policeman blood. Horrendously outnumbered and completely overwhelmed, Sergeant Jaka and his decreasingly sizable team of lion-hearted lawmen find themselves stuck in a bloody battle to the death in a nightmarish high-rise tower from which the only escape is squeezing triggers, yanking grenade pins, swinging blades and knocking knuckles; basically, killing everyone.
We leap and sprint through the corridors, rooms, narcotics labs and fire escapes of the building along with the fearless SWAT team, who are with each step they cautiously take greeted by hostile forces intent on bloody murder. Tenants are flung through windows; stomachs are punctured with broken chair legs; throats are torn open with fluorescent light bulbs; and rows of crooks are blown up by exploding refrigerators. It’s all so exciting and ever so thrilling, filmed with an uncompromising uber-kineticism by Evans, whose boisterous camerawork and frenetic editing doesn’t rid his meticulously choreographed action set-pieces of all-important visual clarity and spacial awareness - we can actually comprehend what is going on; believing it is the tricky part.
The fighting style gloriously showcased in the film is apparently something called Pencak Silat, a lesser-known martial art upon which Evans has previously focused his attention: he filmed a documentary on the subject in 2007, and his second feature film, 2009’s “Merantau,” heavily featured the art. Playing the hero of “The Raid,” rookie Rama, is Iko Owais, an expert in the field whose physical abilities are nothing short of extraordinary. In each of the film’s vast array of bare-knuckle brawls, Owais utterly convinces as a one-man army, thumping his opponents and manipulating their joints with such breakneck speed it’s surprising the camera is able to keep up with him. He’s like the Indonesian Jackie Chan, only without the family-friendly values: dare to face him, he’ll fucking slaughter you.
The film takes on a video game structure - yes, on top of being an aesthetic musical, “The Raid” is a big-screen, live-action video game. Our band of heroes work their way up the tower block, level by level, each level surrounded by hordes of disposable enemies who must be bruised, pummeled and destroyed. There are cutscenes, as the film takes a few momentary breathers from the delirious, blood-soaked carnage it so gleefully indulges in. There’s even an end-of-game boss level, a three-man battle fought against Tama’s right-hand man, Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), whose dexterity and unstoppable determination is utterly insane. Comparing a movie to a video game is typically seen to be an insult, but here it works only as a compliment. For what it’s worth, it’s the best goddamn video game movie I have ever seen.
Unbelievably filmed with a shoestring budget of $1.1 million, “The Raid” is truly, boundlessly breathtaking. Unashamedly derivative of classic works of its genre, it is fitted with the entertainment value of “Die Hard,” the intensity of “Assault on Precinct 13,” the style of “Hard Boiled,” the action of “Ong-Bak," the claustrophobia of “[Rec]” and the invention of “Oldboy.” Bursting at the seams with jaw-dropping stuntwork and gorgeous action choreography, it is a film that will have you gasping and guffawing, oohing and aahing in the auditorium. Most importantly of all though, it is a well-deserved, hard-hitting kick in the pants to the uninventive laziness that has plagued western action cinema of recent years - one doubts that “The Expendables 2” will provide the oohs and aahs that “The Raid” does for every minute of its runtime.
10/10
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