The Raid review

 Number 716 on the top 1000 films of all time is the 2011 Indonesian martial art, action-thriller 'The Raid.'

Rama (Iko Uwais) is a member of an elite swat team sent into a high-rise building to take down notorious crime-lord Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy) and his top lieutenants Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian) and Andi (Donny Alamsyah.) Rama is assisted by his sergeant Jaka (Joe Taslin) and lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno.)

Upon making this film, Gareth Evans said that he wanted to make a pure action film. He certainly achieved that. The Raid is non-stop action with plenty of explosions, hand-to-hand combat, gratuitous violence and non-stop gunshots. Unfortunately, Evans forgot to include any semblance of a storyline. The narrative, as far as it goes, is paper-thin and often gives way to the fight sequences. Don't get me wrong, the martial art sequences are brilliantly choregraphed. The actors are depicting the Indonesian martial art of pencak silat and they never put a foot wrong. 

It's just after one or two fight sequences, it all became very repetitive and monotonous. The fight sequences, as spectacular as they were, very quickly took over the film. And they might have looked great, but they were hardly the most realistic. The characters seem to survive endless knocks to the head that would have killed somebody like me. And this lack of realism certainly stopped me from becoming too immersed. But I guess action films are never supposed to be the most realistic. They're not documentaries.

While Gareth Evans did attempt to have emotional beats or subplots, they always felt half-done. He didn't properly develop these into anything of substance. It's implied that Wahyu is corrupt, but this is never explored in any great detail. It is revealed that Rama and Andi are estranged brothers, but this plotline is never given any chance to breathe, before we're thrust back into the action. Rama also has an expectant wife at home, yet except for a brief scene in the beginning, we hear very little of her ever again.

And the film is ridden with all the cliches we could expect from an action film: guns that never run out of ammo, bad guys who scream before attacking somebody, losing the element of surprise and giving away their position, bad guys who just when it looks like the hero is down-and-out then hesitate or monologue allowing themselves to be overpowered. It's explained that Rama and the rest of the SWAT team are a bunch of rookies so that explains why so many of them are completely useless and die quickly. But why were the bad guys such noobs?

Usually I end reviews like these with a disclaimer of "this wasn't necessarily a bad film, but it just wasn't for me." I can't do that here. Action films and martial-art films can be enjoyable to watch as long as the action is balanced with a strong storyline and the storyline was virtually non-existent. Film critic Roger Ebert panned the film giving it one out of four stars. He received a lot of criticism for his review, but I'm with him all the way here. The Raid was not a good film.