Ultimately, it’s The Raid’s skill at reading an audience’s heart-rate that makes it such an exhilarating rush. More importantly, they double up as perfectly placed recovery points. The primitive invasion plot has just enough twists and character flips to keep you emotionally enagaged. Director Gareth Evans has pulled off something of a coup here, tempering the cartoon hysteria of Asian action cinema with a slicker, colder Western sensibility. Of course, we’ve been here before, with Ong-Bak and the coming of Tony Jaa - Uwais’ advantage is the film matches him move for move. Uwais, The Raid’s primary weapon, was raised on his native pencak silat, rarely seen and, it turns out, fearsomely cinematic - quick as kung fu but blunter, weapon-ready and not shy of using its environment. Prima, an Indonesian icon, trained in taekwondo - a Korean martial art. Its last big bruiser, the mighty Barry Prima, flaunted his exotic hair during the ’80s, pounding rubber crocodiles in a series of daft fantasy lemons. Surprisingly, for a nation with such a loaded martial arts heritage, you can count the number of Indonesian action stars on one fist. With the possible exception of watching Iko Uwais dive out a window, fall three storeys and land on a fire escape - still fighting the same guy. There will be few more thrilling sights this year than watching Iko Uwais domino a bunch of superbads down a corridor. It’s not remotely suggestive - just breathlessly visceral. ![]() Here, the combat is shot long, wide, often from an insane angle, frequently one take. Rapid cuts and shaky cams might give you the sense of being inside a brawl, but it’s wearing numb. It’s certainly a stylistic wake-up call for Hollywood’s default battle mode. And yet, between an unknown Indonesian and a man from Merthyr Tydfil, The Raid’s accomplished what all action movies promise but few achieve - it makes you gasp. The dialogue’s been cut-and-pasted from Action Movie Pass Notes (“We go in, we take him out” “Not without my team”, and, that classic understatement, “We have company”). Other than hailing from Indonesia, there’s nothing new about The Raid - in fact, with its henchmen, Big Bads and AK-47s, it’s stubbornly retrograde. It’s been a while, but here’s an unabashed, unironic Friday-night movie - a noisy, bloodlusting crowdpleaser that’s like a kickback to the grindhouse. Hot off the festival circuit, the buzz on this one is well-earned and genuine. This didn’t happen during The Expendables. There might have even been an “eep” from one of the broadsheets. Everyone, eventually, contributed their own part to the soundtrack. At The Raid, however, decorum fell out the window. Most screenings, you could hear a spider fart in a film can. ![]() For those who’ve never ‘entered the vacuum’, they’re a bit like taking an entertainment exam - guarded, concentrated, lots of pen-chewing and a firm, unspoken etiquette of silence. ![]() Critic screenings can be a weird, airless place to eat up a movie.
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