Long after the murder of his father — a secret agent killed in a missile factory raid — former special forces operative Nikita (played by renowned stuntman Ivan Kotik) returns to Russia as a mercenary. He leads an elite team on a top-dollar heist targeting the same facility, but no one else knows his true objective is revenge.
Director Denis Kryuchkov’s “Russian Raid” makes no apologies for wanting to be the next entry in Gareth Evens’ successful “Raid” franchise, the only problem is, his movie is clichéd, uninspired, and lifeless, in spite of the film being riddled with endless fight scenes and action setpieces galore. The movie doesn’t even try to create a character arc for our protagonist, simply titled Nikita (Ivan Kotik), an ex-sniper who seeks retribution after a bad guy has his partner killed while they’re on a mission together.
This same bad guy is also responsible for killing Nikita’s father when he was a young boy and he has spent his entire life training to become the best he can be so that one day he can unleash hell, or justice, as he calls it, on said bad guy.
While on the mission with his partner, the bad guy he is after appears in the middle of the jungle as part of an illegal weapons deal, and instead of waiting for the right time to capture him, Nikita’s emotions get the best of him and he hastily fires his gun at him. His nemesis disappears but not before he and his partner are fired upon, resulting in his partner’s demise. Nikita leaves the military, feeling responsible for his partner’s death. Later on as a mercenary, he agrees to a job where he has to lead a small group of soldiers into a supposedly empty warehouse to retrieve illegal weapons but when he discovers that his adversary is the head of the organization who owns the weapons, he fights tooth and nail to come face-to-face with him, so he can exact revenge for the lives he took.
“Russian Raid” doesn’t care about story or character exposition, it gives the viewer the most basic narrative, a man seeks revenge against another, and that is it. The entire film is one fight scene that leads into another that leads into a shootout that leads into another fight scene, just so we can get to the finale and watch the protagonist and the antagonist beat the crap out of each other. The fight scenes are heavy-handed and clumsy and for a movie that boasts some of the best Russian MMA fighters today, I was left extremely underwhelmed. And don’t even get me started on the acting, or lack thereof. There is absolutely nothing redeemable about “Russian Raid,” except for the closing credits. And even they took too long to conclude.
Available on Blu-ray™, DVD, & Digital March 9th
