The Raid : Redemption

Guns, martial arts, and the absence of doves flying around for no apparent reason (take that John Woo)??? This sounds like my kind of action movie! Actually a small part of me likes the ridiculousness of doves randomly flying around. And to be honest that might have made this movie fresher. Damn you Woo!! You finally won me over! Anyway, how could you not be pumped for The Raid, if you have even a mild interest in action movies? Filmed by a Welsh director in Indonesia, this seemed like a film that was made specifically to show you how action movies should be done. There is just enough plot to give you an actual story, so you care what happens to the characters on screen and it actually justifies what seems like 100 minutes of senseless violence. But not too much of a plot so that you're now stuck with Spiderman 3 and you're watching the main characters singing show tunes to one another in the midst of a pointless love triangle. Horrible, horrible film.

So the plot is pretty basic; this police unit, that includes our hero the rookie Rama, is sent on a mission to take down a drug lord in a residential building that he also runs. The building is full of his gang and other random criminals who need a place to hide out. Many have tried to take over this place in the past but have failed and because of this, Tama (drug lord) has built up this reputation as untouchable even to the police. Aiding in validating his Suge Knight status are his two main henchmen, Andi and Mad Dog; whose ruthlessness will be revealed later. Once Tama sees that the police have entered his domain, he instantly locks the place down and announces free rent to anyone in the building that helps take out the SWAT team. And so the freshness begins.

The movie really breaks up into three parts, showing you different art forms of fighting. The first is gun play. The police get into a long shoot out with the residents that also includes a few explosions; but this actually ends up being the most ho hum part of the movie. It's really nothing that you haven't seen before but at least some of the plot is revealed here. You learn that this mission is not exactly what it seems. I'll stop there and wont expand any further so that you have the same experience that I did when I first saw this movie.
The next form they explore is knife/sword fighting. Here is where the movie picks up steam! The choreographed  fighting scenes are pretty amazing and you end up with some death scenes that rival even the ones from the Final Destination movies. During this act, yet another layer of the plot is peeled back and adds an interesting angle to the film; of which I wont reveal for reasons mentioned earlier. Lastly they explore the hand to hand combat and here is where Mad Dog shines. Instead of shooting you, here prefers to pummel people to death. And his level of skill makes him the biggest badass on screen since Ong Bak. He effortlessly takes people out and does so in a manner that actually makes you scared of a man who is 5'3" and weighs about the same of that of a horse jockey.

All in all I thoroughly enjoyed this film. It is full of wall to wall action and gives you needed dialogue breaks so that you can sit back and digest some the freshness you just saw. I would definitely rate this movie as TIGHT!