The Raid / The Raid: Redemption
2011
***
Director: Gareth Huw Evans
Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Yayan Ruhian, Pierre Gruno, Tegar Setrya, Ray Sahetapy
The Jakarta police SWAT team, which includes a rookie officer who is on a partly personal mission, raid a 15-storey apartment building in order to eliminate a ruthless crime lord, but end up trapped inside with hordes of criminals and tenants out to kill them. Regular corridors and apartments (which are oddly large and conveniently unfurnished) turn into fierce battle grounds. This exhilarating Indonesian martial arts action film, which was helmed by the Welsh director Gareth Huw Evans, has a a skeletal plot. 90% of the running time is taken by fights, first with guns, then with knives and machetes, and eventually with bare fists. The action scenes are inventive, acrobatic and thankfully not edited to death. However, the relentless barrage of violence gets monotonous, especially towards the end when each individual duel seems to take longer than the one that came before it.
