Action flick’s biggest asset is its simplicity
The Raid: Redemption (in Indonesian with subtitles) ★★★
1/2
Starring: Iko Uwais, Ananda George and Ray Sahetapy Director: Gareth Evans
Classification: 18A, gory
violence
Theatres: South Edmonton Common, Scotiabank Violence can be so satisfying.
A raw rush of adrenalin, muscles and acrobatic skill, the action movie has the potential to be the equivalent of the oldfashioned musical — only with buckets of fake blood. Alas, the potential is rarely realized.
Ever since Sam Peckinpah pushed the cinematic boundaries of gore and poetic death, a generation of creatively challenged directors cloned his work without actually understanding the underlying psychological stakes.
Reducing violence to esthetics by making gore look stylish, colourful, funny and hip sold tickets, but it also rendered cinema much poorer by removing the meaning from human suffering.
Violence should make us cringe and feel queasy, not just be there for the cheap thrills.
Welsh director Gareth Evans understands the critical difference between stylish shlock and artery-throbbing acrobatics, and his feature, The Raid:
Redemption feels like a return to old-fashioned fisticuffs.
An action movie that showcases a particular brand of Indonesian martial arts called Pencak Silat, The Raid:
Redemption showcases the physical mastery of its star and hero, Iko Uwais.
From the moment we see Uwais don his police uniform and tell his pregnant wife he’ll be home tonight, we know something bad is about to happen to our family-man messiah.
Two minutes later, he’s on a SWAT bus alongside his buddies on the way to a big raid. Looking to weed out a gang boss in the midst of the Jakarta ghetto, the SWAT team surrounds an aging concrete apartment building and proceeds to secure the area.
Everything seems to be going according to plan, but someone has sold the SWAT team out, and the entire team is ambushed and trapped.
With a camera on every floor and elevator, the surviving team members are forced to play a game of hide and seek with bloodthirsty criminals, but no matter how smart or sensitive, the good guys get picked o one by one.
Near the end, only a handful survives, and there’s still no guarantee they’ll be able to leave the building alive.
The premise couldn’t be more straightforward: This is really just an extended game of cat and mouse.
Yet, its simplicity turns out to be its biggest asset, because it frees Evans from the duties of epic storyteller and lets him sink into the role of action impresario.
With so much athletic skill at his fingertips, Evans’ central responsibility is capturing the physical stunts without losing the immediacy of the moment.
In cases where the screen talent is fully capable of pulling o their own moves, the director doesn’t have to cheat angles or fudge stand-ins. He can let it roll, and that’s exactly what Evans does.
Filming each action scene the way Golden Age directors used to shoot a dance number, Evans lets us see the actors from head to toe. He doesn’t cut the scenes down to visual gibberish to give us the impression of fast action; he lets us see lightning-fast kicks and punches.
The Raid: Redemption features some of the most impressive balletic moves seen since Bruce Lee fought his way to fame. It’s dazzling. Perhaps the biggest surprise is just how satisfying plain action can be.
Evans gives us a movie that feels written in blood — an honest look at man in his natural state as he faces the neverending, and altogether universal, struggle between life and death.