Starring: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Ray Sahetapy, Donny Alamsyah Director: Gareth Huw Evans
Category: III (Bahasa Indonesia)
The Raid - Redemption reworks the lone hero genre's cliches as director Gareth Huw Evans omits the stirring goodbyes and pompous promises of returning safe and sound, and opens the film in darkness and menace.
In an eerily quiet montage, rookie SWAT member Rama (Iko Uwais, right) is seen prepping his artillery and praying - all signs of the young man's faith and discipline - before he bids his wife goodbye and then tells his father he 'will bring him back'.
This refreshing lack of melodrama reaches far beyond the bombastic action comedies with which Hong Kong filmmakers once mesmerised international audiences, The Raid is a no-nonsense, relentless feast of bone-crunching, blood-splattered violence.
Complex characterisations and nuanced narratives have no role here, as the Welsh-born and now Jakarta-based Evans lets loose ceaseless stunning carnage around the flimsy premise of a showdown between a handful of cops and the thugs filling every floor of a 15-storey tenement.
Cerebral this action extravaganza certainly is not, as shown in a brief exchange when Rama questions why he and his colleagues must storm the tower: 'Why the f*** not?' is the riposte from his superior.
