Oh, hells yes. At this point, even I'm sick of hearing how awesome THE RAID is. But the sad truth is, THE RAID is a straight shot to the nutsack that hurts so good that the only way to make it feel better is to ask for someone to hit you one more time even harder. And the guy you want to do the cockpunching is one Iko Uwais, the Indonesian actor and fight choreographer destined to become one of the biggest action stars on the planet. And god bless writer-director Gareth Huw Evans for discovering the guy and devising such a fucking relentless movie around him.
There's not much to say about the THE RAID: REDEMPTION (fine, I'll play along with the new title) except that it's about a special forces team (of which Uwais is a rookie member) who must storm a 15-story apartment complex populated almost entirely by people who want to kill them. On the top floor of the building is Tama (Ray Sahetaphy), a crime boss who announces to those in the building that he will give lifelong protection to anyone delivering the head of a police officer to him. What's so damn magnificent about the film is that the entire damn movie is one long action sequence. Sure, there is the occasional breather, but this movie is one long raid.
Once the cops enter the building in the first few minutes, the action never leaves the apartment building. The film is a bloody circus of body parts, unspeakable stunts, and a style of fighting (called Pencak Silat, a traditional Indonesian martial art) that I simply have never seen before. It's both economical in its movements, while being wholly adaptable to each fighting situation; sometimes it's about clean motion, while other times, it's wild and animalistic. And you will leave the theater trying to beat your friends to death copying it.
I never saw Evans previous film MERANTAU (also starring Uwais), but that will be quickly rectified. You won't be able to help but watch THE RAID: REDEMPTION without a feeling that you are seeing something utterly unique. And that's because you'll be watching the birth of such much raw talent (both from the director and the star), and you'll want to consume the afterbirth just to taste the greatness of its badassery. How do you review an action film that delivers on every promise that all other actions films in the last 5-10 years have failed to provide?
Consider this review the equivalent of me grabbing you by your shirt collar, shaking the shit out of you, and screaming in your face as my spittle splashes your face as I tell you to run immediately to see THE RAID: REDEMPTION, even if the closest theater is hundreds of miles away. As people who care deeply about great cinema and innovative filmmaking, you have no choice.
