The Raid Redemption (2011) – Review 8/10

This movie came to my attention one night while browsing the trailer section on IMDB. Being a fan of martial arts movies and of Silat (the martial art used in the movie) I knew I would see it as soon as I could and hope it was as good as it seemed.

I must say that movies nowadays rarely meet my expectations, however The Raid was as good as it gets. I was very pleased with the tension in the action scenes and the actors.

But lets look at the different parts

Story (6/10): This is a martial arts movie, it was made to showcase the skills of the actors and stunts. So the focus is not really on the story. It is almost as simple as we could get. There is a building that is run by a crime lord, he rents apartments to criminals and other unsavory characters. The police knows about it but can not enter. So they devise an operation to clean the building and capture the crime lord. A swat team infiltrates the building and starts to clear it floor by floor, unfortunately they are found out and all the criminal come after them. There is also a side plot about family choices as one of the main police characters finds his brother in the building. 

Photography (8/10): The building itself has as much personality as the characters, the walls look old and grey. It looks like a building where we would not want to go in, much less live in. However it makes you think about the people who live there, apparently not all of them are criminals (there is a couple who helps the police) however they have to live with the criminals running the building and going crazy around them.

Fight scenes (9/10): Without a doubt this wins the movie, the fight scenes are beatifully choreographed and brutal. You have to watch some of them more then once to understand what happened. My only problem with it is that some scenes tend to be a bit too long, specially if you take into account that the martial art of the movie was made to kill or incapacitate people as quickly as possible. Not to mention that the last fight goes on and on with hits that would probably kill anyone many times over, I know that the characters are all proficient fighters, but there is a limit to it. Anyway, some of the best fights I seen in years, on par with the first Ong-Bak.

Overall a good movie to kill some time and see some people do amazing things with their fists and feets. Really worth watching more than once.