The Raid: Redemption (not yet on DVD)

NOTE: Early, gushing reviews from TIFF Midnight Madness presentations
should not generally be trusted, as many fest-goers are unable to
separate the film from the experience, and formal critical consensus
often sends most Midnight films into obscurity. Thankfully, THE RAID
earns its stripes and deserves its praise, and stands firmly above the
typically overeager reactions heaped on many other films screened in
the Midnight program this year and in years past.

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In the future, when someone tells you a movie is wall-to-wall martial
arts and gunplay, you should have no choice but to ask them how it
rates against this picture, which has so much gunfire and brutal
martial arts action -- all of it meticulously choreographed in ways
more refreshing than I'd ever have thought possible in this world of
peak-performance Donnie Yens and Tony Jaas -- that I very nearly lost
the hearing in my right ear, in no small part thanks to the tendency of
TIFF sluggos to mistake volume for quality when adjusting their sound
levels in an aged, less-than--acoustically-ideal theatre.

Star Iko Uwais is the real deal: wiry, lightning-fast and evidently the
leader of a team of experts that truly takes martial arts choreography
into new territory with this film (and, to a lesser extent, MERENTAU
before it). If there's a downside to his inevitable celebrity because
of this film, it's that Indonesian cinema in general will fare no
better than Thai cinema has in the wake of Tony Jaa. Like Jaa, anything
Uwais makes from this film on -- especially if he keeps teaming with
writer-director Gareth Evans, as he should for at least a couple more
pictures -- will gain instant and welcome interest from the west, while
the rest of Indonesian cinema (such as it is!) will remain the domain
of low-brow entertainment that caters largely to the locals, with the
exception of the occasional horror movie that can be scooped up for
exploitation by "Asian Extreme" DVD labels and streams in the U.S. and
Europe.

What really separates this picture from the hordes of martial arts
films from the region is its heavy use of Silat, the native martial art
of Indonesia. I've seen a billion martial arts pictures over the years,
and a million "styles" to go with them, but I'll admit my knowledge of
Silat was absolute zero, and this movie turned out to be a wonderful
wakeup call.

The key thing about Silat is that it involves knives, lots of 'em, and
the film's heroes and villains deploy them with extreme prejudice for
almost the entire duration. One stab won't do, but ten capped off by a
throat slashing is a good way to gauge whether you've won the battle.

By way of example, picture the exemplary alley-fight-with-sharp-weapons
between Donnie Yen and Jackie Wu Jing in SPL (a personal favourite
sequence). Now, double the speed (!), and make the ultimate goal to
stab, slice or otherwise eviscerate your opponent into oblivion, and
you've got most of the hand-to-hand combat in THE RAID. Hero cop Uwais
has this neat little trick where he stabs a long blade deep into your
upper thigh, then yanks it clean down to your kneecap. Ouch! This thing
is bloody with a capital B, but it's so exceptionally well
choreographed, photographed and edited that you never lose sight of the
geography surrounding the combatants or feel like you've missed a
single blow or puncture as each new pair (or group!) of fighters grinds
each other down.

Evans' editing in particular is a standout, and rather refreshingly, it
isn't used to hide little bits of phony business or make the fight
participants look more skilled than they really are, such as it often
is in so many action pictures these days (both in western, and, sadly,
many Asian cinemas; Legend of the Fist, I'm looking at you). Evans'
performers know their stuff, and his editing does more showing than
telling.

As to the picture as a whole, if you thought the final 40 minutes of
John Woo's HARD BOILED were collectively one of the greatest pieces of
action cinema from anywhere ever, imagine that cinematic Nirvana
expanded to feature length, and with virtually no fat. The movie starts
with a team of elite cops attempting to covertly secure a maze-like
high-rise slum apartment building run by a merciless drug lord (when we
first meet him, he's executing five bound and gagged men in his office,
but he runs out of bullets for the fifth guy, which causes him to
casually grab a hammer out of his desk drawer . . . ). Within minutes,
though, his goons -- who populate every floor of the building like
cockroaches, fight like rabid dogs and spontaneously appear around
every corner and out of every doorway -- turn the tables and wipe out
most of the fleet in a monster battle of guns, fists, feet and the
ubiquitous knives, trapping just a precious few of our heroes on the
sixth and seventh floors with little hope of escape.

Aside from a couple of quiet moments where allegiances on both sides of
the field shift, not unexpectedly, that's pretty much it in terms of
plot, and it obvious the filmmakers would have it no other way. This is
a showcase, for Silat, for Indonesia and for Iko Uwais, who is very
much the "next Tony Jaa" (as I'm sure he'll be labeled far and wide),
for better and, somewhat regrettably, for worse in terms of his
country's film industry, for he may very well come to single-handedly
represent it around the globe. Not that I'm complaining after having
been winded by such an audacious effort as THE RAID.

Barry Prima who?

Vice President Boediono national award of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to 14 characters and companies are considered to contribute to progress the development of IPR systems in Indonesia. The Raid received an award for the category Copyright Creative Economy.