The Raid: Redemption

HOLY SHIT.  HOLY SHIT.  HOLY SHIT.  This is a controversial call here, but I think "The Raid: Redemption" might actually be the Best Movie of 2012.  And yeah, I know this is a year with "Batman 3", "The Hobbit", and a new Tarantino flick, but "The Raid" has really set the bar pretty damn high.  This movie was amazing.  This movie was gangsta.  This movie was badass.  This movie was FUCKING AWESOME HOLY SHIT.

Do you remember where you were when you first saw "The Matrix"?  I don't either.  But I do remember walking out of that theatre with my little face wearing the exact same expression as I wear now.  It was a revelation of badassary.  You never knew action movies could be so incredible before you saw Neo diving through a lobby dodging bullets and blasting random guards away.  Then he took down Agent Smith and everything was awesome forever.  ...Until the sequels, but we'll ignore them.  "The Raid" is that caliber of action movie.  And I don't mean a rip-off of "The Matrix"'s CG slow-mo effects and bullet time, no, I mean, the action scenes in this movie are just inventive, fun, and mindboggeling insanely cool as in "The Matrix".  Its the kind of movie that you watch with a big stupid smile the entire time, finding nothing but things to love as people tear each other to pieces in front of you for your amusement.  I know the metaphor "roller coaster ride" is the most over-used and terrible marketing cliché ever, but if you've ever been a truly awesome roller coaster, you know the feeling I'm talking about.  "The Raid" is a goddamn incredible roller coaster, its Millennium Force or The Beast incredible.

If "The Raid" were a human being, it wouldn't be Chuck Norris.  Chuck Norris is a wet pussy compared to this movie.  It would be Andrew-fucking-Jackson, the most badass man to ever live.

I've been reduced to my year-old-self in the sight of the magnificence of this movie I've found here.  Apparently Indonesia is the most awesome country on Earth, because they're the ones who made this movie.  Their title for this movie is even more awesome than the American one, they call it "Deadly Assault".  Rather than ruining the kung-fu Pencak Silat kickass by remaking "The Raid" and replacing the native actors with Hollywood losers like Taylor Lautner or something, the movie was simply shipped here in its foreign purity.  I wouldn't have it any other way.

Two weeks ago I went to see "The Hunger Games", which is right now the biggest movie in America.  That's a load of crap, "The Raid" needs to be the biggest movie in America.  If you recall, I hated that movie because it was dull and flavorless and most importantly, hid all the action scenes behind pure cowardice.  "The Hunger Games" is a classic example of a movie mutilating itself in order to slip by with a PG-13 rating.  PG-13 is the rating for the dickless. You can't have real violence, you can't have real sex, you can't have real anything, you have to compromise.  So "The Hunger Games" was a dark and extremely violent story about teenagers murdering each other, its not going to be a fun time for the whole family.  You cut out the bloodshed, you cut out the story.  "The Avengers" movie next month is going to suck compared to "The Raid".  You know why?  PG-13, that's why.

Every bit of awesome that "The Hunger Games" removed managed to get multiplied by ten gazillion and was used in "The Raid".  When it comes time for the main character, Rama, to take on a whole hallway full of bad guys, the camera doesn't shake and point to something else.  No, Rama takes out a knife and cuts out some motherfucker's throats, and the camera isn't hiding anything.  This movie is violent, probably one of the most violent movies I've ever seen, and its not going to pretend its anything but what a big explosive action movie.  When a person needs to die, they fucking die.  BOOM!  Throat gets cut out, blood everywhere, the screaming of the damned left in the hero's wake.  And no, I'm not going to apologize when I say I enjoyed watching people kill each other for two hours.  I don't care.  I'm with the Clown 1% in "Hunger Games", I want to see blood, I want to see carnage, I have violent tastes, and fuck you if that's a problem.

If that is a problem for you, "The Raid" is not going to be your movie.  Because this isn't really a movie with much of a plot... or characters... or dialog.  Really, its just 100 minutes of kung-fu Pencak Silat going up and kung-fu Pencak Silat going down.  Basically, an Indonesian SWAT team is attacking an apartment building ruled by the most dangerously insane mobster on Earth.  They start their attack, but pretty quickly get completely overwhelmed and 90% of them are wiped out.  Don't worry about those guys, they didn't have names.  Now their stuck in a building full of crazy gangsters above and crazy gangsters below.  How do you escape?  KUNG-FU PENCAK SILAT.  You need super kung-fu Pencak Silat to destroy all your enemies.  And that's it for pretty much the rest of the movie, the best kung-fu Pencak Silat action scenes I've ever seen.

Honestly, if they could have combined the interesting plotline of "The Hunger Games" with the action chop-socky of "The Raid", they might have made without a doubt the Best Movie Ever Made.  Unfortunately they didn't.  Now, usually I like stories and characters and stuff.  Usually I like to pretend I'm more than a little kid jumping up in down in front of the screen laughing with glee when the bad guys get knocked down.  But not anymore.  "The Raid" is pure simple awesome, nothing more.  And curiously, 85% of film critics are with me here according to Rotten Tomatoes.

Oh, there are a few characters here and there in this movie, but their worth is directly linked to their kung-fu Pencak Silat skills.  The big boss of the SWAT team knows no kung-fu Pencak Silat, he is a worthless human being.  The young leader knows some kung-fu Pencak Silat, that makes him decent enough to be worth our attention, but still expendable.  Rama, however, knows NASTY kung-fu Pencak Silat, making him our hero.  The main underling to the villain, Mad Dog, might be only five feet tall, but he can still take on two kung-fu Pencak Silat masters at once, which I suppose makes him the greatest character ever.  Give me Darth Vader, give me Jason Vorhees, I'll take them all over Mad Dog.  Because Mad Dog will fuck you up.

Rational thought and rational reviews are worthless.  All literary criticism is broken before the might of a boot to your face and a knife through your throat.  That's what "The Raid" taught me.  This is the worst review I've ever written, but I don't care.  Make more movies like this.