Virally praised for being a hail mary pass for action movies and another potential gateway into the martial arts film realm, THE RAID: REDEMPTION goes very far but can not go all the way. The brutal kicks, vicious gunplay and overall nihilism couldn't completely mask over the pitiful inserts of action movie plot cliches and ham-fisted melodrama it wants us to accept upon face value. It grabs your breath with expertly built fight scenes and constant dread, only to have its character then drag their feet through yawn-inducing plot twists.
A group of Indonesian SWAT officers, who are later suitably revealed to be nothing but a bunch of greenhorns and noobs, are sent to take apart and subjugate a dilapidated apartment complex riddled with fifteen floors of drug-runners, drug-takers, and their bloodthirsty bodyguards. The building is lorded over by one sadistic man, who is the police's main target and the only thing able to keep themselves alive when they make the long walk back down. As expected by basically anyone watching this, the plan falls apart fast and the remaining few officers, including our main protagonist Rama (Iko Uwais), need to survive in order to escape their newly formed prison.
Gee, I wonder if there also are some secrets kept hidden within the sweat-filled mists and blood-soaked floors? Of course there needs to be some, and they are so easy to spot by anyone yet the film chooses to wait and wait and wait before finally having them come out in the open to absolutely no shock whatsoever. I don't mind a martial arts film having an actual story and some tragic moments amongst the thrown blows, but THE RAID's plot is a platitude of triteness, further hampered by the flat charisma of its actors.
Despite these heavy flaws, THE RAID: REDEMPTION is amazing in its elbow-to-face violence and cacophony of human screams and techno beats. All of the fights are very memorable, each given some prologue time to build up suspense and anticipation before a machete meets a shoulder, a neck holds a broken light tube in place, and a leg becomes a Twizzler. I also didn't mind the newly constructed musical score by Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park fame and Joseph Trapanese, which helped amplify the human body destruction and moral decay. Though his writing is highly laughable, director Gareth Evans does deserve points for maintaining a horror-like atmosphere to the proceedings, especially in the first act, as the denizens are given certain incentives to attack the invading pests and pop out of the doors and the darkness. He also makes good use of some black comedy and realism, such as when our main hero keeps walking around a floor he already conquered and keeps seeing the same bodies, withering in pain or dead, still laying all about. However, the complete color correction of the film might make the pain and suffering look more brutal, but it also gives the copious amounts of blood a shade of poop brown.
I enjoyed the fun time with this flick but it surely does have limited life beyond midnight group screenings and fight compilations. The utter lameness of its crime story and constant slogging to the next action scene proved to be a severe blow to the film's gut. Still though, it is very violent and incredibly glorious in its ballet of CQC. Since the film is now to be given the popular Hollywood treatment of being turned to a trilogy, I don't mind checking back upon this movie or its future sequels, though only if drama is more exceptional and not grade-school level characterization.
FINAL REVIEW: 3 / 5
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