The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Original Indonesian Title: Serbaut Maut

Director: Gareth Evans

A martial arts/action movie tour-de-force that I finally got around to watching. I can see why it quickly became such a beloved classic among fans of the genre. 

The story isn't terribly complex: in a beaten-down, urban neighborhood in Indonesia, a S.W.A.T. team launches an assault on a building held by a violent, ruthless drug kingpin. The team has to battle its way to the drug lord on the top floor of the blasted concrete structure, fighting through wave after wave of thugs and henchmen armed with guns, knives, and some ferocious martial arts skills. One of the S.W.A.T. members, Rama, is especially adept at both fighting and seeing the larger picture at work, and he becomes one of the very few members of his team to get beyond the first few floors of the death trap building. 

The Raid: Redemption goes all out as an action/fighting movie. Although I only just saw it for the first time, I remember hearing about it from a few action-loving friends back around 2012, when it really wasn't shown much in the U.S. Now I can see what they meant. After only about five-minutes of barely-necessary but simply effective "plot" setup, things go totally nuts for Rama and his team. They're getting sniped from nearby buildings, blasted from floors above them, and generally attacked from every angle imaginable. They acquit themselves fairly well and fight back admirably, but the tension and carnage are never more than one minute or one corner away. 

So it's one thing to just pack a movie with action. More importantly is whether the action is visually engaging. The answer for The Raid: Redemption is a definite "Yes!" However, this answer will of course be dependent on how one feels about action scenes. Some people can't get enough well-done fighting and action scenes in movies. Other people - like my wife - immediately tune out the moment a car chase, fistfight, or gunbattle erupt in a movie. I find myself somewhere in the middle on this - I'll remain engaged for a while in an action sequence, as long as it shows some visual and choreographic creativity. But my engagement will usually wear down after a while, if the action overwhelms the emotional or narrative elements of the movie. With The Raid, I did eventually grow less interested in the on-screen mayhem, despite recognizing how extremely well-done all of the action elements were executed. But if you dig intense, well-shot fighting in many forms, then you'll love the action in this movie. There's no "shaky cam" work, and the brutality of the confrontations is palpable at all times.

This one key fight scene conveys just some of the intensity
of the combat and the rather stark backdrops for much of
the action. Still, everything is lit and shot impressively.

One other thing worth pointing out is the general aesthetic. It may not be for everyone. Even if you're an action movie fan, you have to know that The Raid: Redemption is one of the grungiest, filthiest action flicks you're likely to see. This isn't a super-slick, visually dazzling "Fast and Furious" or Michael Bay movie. These are scuzzy, violent, impoverished criminals trying to brutally kill cops in a dank, grey, dilapidated building that looks like it barely survived a World War II bombing raid. To be clear, the camerawork, costumes, and settings are great; they present a clear vision from the director. But that vision is a gritty hellscape setting in which we get bloody pandemonium for over 90 minutes. 

Will I watch this again? Most likely not. I'm not a pure enough action fan to feel the need. However, I'll probably check out the sequel, The Raid 2, as it is also considered a very influential modern action movie. I'll be curious to see what writer/director Gareth Evans was able to do with a bigger budget, though I won't expect there to be much more beyond a similar fireworks show of punching, fighting, and shooting. 

New Release! The Art of Self-Defense (2019)

No Spoilers. Read Away!

Director: Riley Stearns

A highly effective dark comedy in the vein of Repo Man, Sorry to Bother You, and other great social satires that create their own worlds around a single young man being suffocated by the warped worlds that surround them.

Jesse Eisenberg plays Casey, a rather quiet, skittish accountant who lives alone with his dachshund and does his best to stay out of other people's way. After being brutally mugged and nearly killed one night by a roving band of motorcycle thugs, Casey decides to take up karate at a local dojo. The dojo is run by an extremely intense trainer, known to us only as "Sensei" (Alessandro Nivola), who feels that karate contains everything that one requires to live a fulfilling life. The rather impressionable Casey quickly devotes himself to the dojo, growing ever more confident and violent as he continues to train. As he rises in the esteem of Sensei, however, it becomes clear that there is something much darker going on at the dojo and among some of its students.

This movie won't be for everyone, just like any dark satire. It operates on its own wavelength, simplifying and distilling its elements in order to create an altered reality which is clearly not meant to be an accurate representation of the world which we really live in. Like any good satire, though, it does an excellent job in honing in on the subject of its commentary - in this case, toxic masculinity - and giving us plenty of great laughs along the way. One just needs to realize that the humor is very much of a satirical nature: dark, dry, and making liberal use of oversimplifying very real facets of society in order to draw us down the paths of their logical conclusions.

Casey, under the tutelage of his eerily intense sensei, puts
everything he has into becoming a lethal practitioner of
karate. This includes hard work and listening to metal.

Like any well done satire, this movie isn't for everyone. In fact, I could tell that more than a few viewers around my wife and me seemed a bit perplexed by the film. "I thought this was supposed to be a comedy," stated one semi-confused fellow. And more than once, my wife and I were among only a few people laughing at what, to us, were obviously meant to be moments of dark humor.  If one isn't picking up the vibe of the movie, it will seem very strange; twisted, even. For those who lock in, though, it provides some thoughtful commentary and plenty of laughs to go along with the rather brutal and violent shocks.

As an aside, we were treated to a post-show Q-and-A with the Austin-based writer/director Riley Stearns (very much to my wife's and my surprise), and he seemed a very thoughtful, talented, and rather grounded young director. I'll be keeping my eyes out for what he does next, as The Art of Self-Defense is a really strong piece of work.