Monday, April 9, 2012

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.

18 comments:

  1. Sweet. I love movies like this. It is nice to once in a while sit back after a long day and just revel in heroic bloodlust.

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  2. Gotta agree with You, Mad Dog probably gonna be remembered as one of the best martial arts villain for decades...

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  3. by the way, it's not KUNG FU. we call it: PENCAK SILAT.
    original martial arts from Indonesia :)

    nice review.

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  4. yup..the martial arts called Pencak Silat, search in youtube, you'll find a lot of amazing Pencak Silat demonstration..

    nice review.. :)

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  5. Current Thought... why is KH3D already disappointing to you? It seems alright to me.

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  6. the secret of the awesome fight scenes is the cast of The Raid are from real-life martial arts experts...iko uwais is a silat master..joe taslim (jaka) is a national judo champion..the guy who plays mad dog (yayan ruhian) is a silat master, he even trained the special squad who guards the President..even the nameless thug who plays the leader of the machete gang is a national gold medal winner of Tarung Derajat (an Indonesian mixed martial arts style) -his real name is Godfred Orindeod by the way-

    a good script + real-life martial arts experts = ONE HELL OF AN ACTION MOVIE :D

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  7. Sorry if anybody was annoyed that I called Pencak Silat "kung fu". I don't know anything about the many categories of martial arts, all I know is that it looked like a Hong Kong action film, which is typically called "kung fu". Do I need to correct it?

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    1. sure, i think you should correct it..
      read this out : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pencak_Silat

      pencak silat has many genre. each genre has their own unique. yayan ruhiyan (mad dog) is come from "perguruan pencak silat tenaga dasar".
      check also one of pencak silat genre, "merpati putih": http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=415959079362

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  8. I would also like to know what evil KH 3D will bestow upon us all...what diabolical plot Square Enix has henched up once more against the only series with hopes of redemption.

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  9. Why is everybody think that KH 3D is horrible? This game is fucking awesome! I've been playing for two days now and the only drawback that I can tell that it has is that the Nightmares are too cute and cuddly to be enemies. Plus the story is starting to really reel me in so please cut it some slack.

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  10. Blue, I need to talk to someone about this and you're the only person I know who reads Dresden Codak. What do you think of the newest page? Cover-up? Amnesia? Replicant?

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    1. Probably all of those things at once. I don't think Kimiko's adventures so far have been made-up or a dream or a time bullshit. The villains are probably just that horribly mistaken... and something deeper is going on.

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    2. The thing is, I don't see how anyone could cover up or not know about what happened at the end of the Hob storyline. And when Kimiko was in the hospital at the end would have been a good point for Kusanagi to insert her and for her real life to begin if she was artificially created. Plus, there is this exchange from the new comic:

      Melchior: "Or written them from scrat-"
      ?????: "Enough"

      The interruption suggests to me that he was on to something with that line of reasoning.

      On the other hand, what would be the point of giving her such strange memories, or creating her with missing limbs? Then there's the fact that her friends have known her for years.

      Things are getting very interesting in this webcomic.

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  11. fella, sorry, i think you better correct the use of kung fu word with correct word: pencak silat. It's traditional indonesian martial art. Kung fu is from china. I know maybe kung fu has been generic term for type of martial arts movie, but there always difference betwen kung fu and pencak silat.

    Btw, nice review, great review actually, like it very much.

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  12. I love Mad Dog's character myself and find the fight between him, Iko Uwais and Donny Alamsyah is one of the best fighting scene in this movie. You can read A little bit more about Yayan Ruhian's (Mad Dog) pencak silat style www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/02/03/yayan-ruhiyan-a-tough-guy-with-a-smile.html

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    1. oh awesome! he seems like a genuinely good person!! He's funny and an interview I watched shows that he's witty... always have answers that can 'throw the joke back' to the host lol, it's fun watching them banter. So he's a smart guy as well =D
      Rama & Jaka are good looking guys and charming characters but MadDog stole the show haha

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  13. Thanks for Share... 'Pencak Silat'

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  14. You should check this teaser from The Raid 2 (sequel of The Raid) --> http://t.co/MCHB5im0h9. It was a GOOD Teaser. MUST WATCH

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