A S.W.A.T. team becomes trapped in a tenement run by a ruthless mobster and his army of killers and thugs.
Gareth Evans, a Welsh-born filmmaker, got his big break in the film industry when he wrote and directed the 2011 action epic, “The Raid: Redemption,” starring Indonesian martial artist Iko Uwais. At the time, he was living in Jakarta, and the two, who had previously worked together on Evans’ 2009 film, “Merantau,” teamed up for “The Raid: Redemption,” grossing $9,148,519 worldwide, on a budget of a little over $1 million. While they would team up once more for the 2014 sequel, “The Raid: Retaliation,” and planned a third entry in the series, that project never came to fruition, and Part 2 is where the series was left.
“The Raid: Redemption” spends very little time on character development and, instead, throws us into the middle of a raid on a dilapidated apartment block in Jakarta’s slums. Crime lord Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy) owns the building and allows criminals to rent rooms while receiving a cut of their business. The police department wants to shut Tama down and sends in twenty of their top officers with the Mobile Brigade Corps, but things don’t go according to plan when it is learned that their arrival was anticipated. As the officers are killed off, one by one, it is up to Rama (Iko Uwais), a rookie cop with exceptional martial arts skills, to continue the raid, try to take down Tama, and learn the traitor’s identity among them.
The one element that stood out while watching this film is that while its star, Iko Uwais, is the lead protagonist, he is not a superhero. We are so used to seeing heroes beat up the bad guys and get away pretty much unscathed, but here, while Rama is versed in the Indonesian martial art of Pencak Silat, he is not the only one. When he and his brother, Andi (Donny Alamsyah), take on Tama’s henchman, Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), it is a brutal fight that never lets up. All three men give as good as they receive, but given that Rama is the movie’s principal character, we expect him to win by a landslide, but it is only because of his and his brother’s collaboration that they can kill Mad Dog.
“The Raid: Redemption” is filled with exciting fight scenes and exceptional action set-pieces, infusing them with grit and intense violence, contributing to its overall unflinching aesthetic. It also inspired “Dredd,” starring Karl Urban, whose storyline was similar to this, and the John Wick films. Over the years, both movies have earned cult status, so maybe down the line, Evans and Uwais might take time out of their busy schedules to give the fans one last installment and finish the trilogy. If not, you can always watch Parts 1 and 2 in succession, again and again and again.
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