Not for the faint hearted, ‘The Raid’ is a non stop action thriller set to keep your heart rate at an unhealthy beat for one hour thirty minutes. A SWAT team gets overrun and trapped in a tower block run by a significant mobster in the area. Within each room, the tower block contains crooks and criminals who are all prepared to fight…
Director Gareth Evans gloriously executes ‘The Raid’ providing a pulsing paced film in which you’ll never want to turn away. The plot does seem relatively bare, but the sub-plots reinforce the events in the high-rise flats, and make us sympathise with the protagonist as well as other characters. However, the main character is lately established as “the hero” but this hardly detracts from the overall gruesome fun of the movie.
The carefully constructed stunts further fuels Evans’ masterpiece by showing the audience an array of concise martial arts; perfectly performed and out of this world. Fist to fist combat is not where it stops because in a blink of an eye it will be all out warfare with explosions and Ak47′s. The variety of impressive and clever set pieces alongside an all in one action package truly singles ‘The Raid’ out from your generic Mission Impossible (although I loved the last one!).
It’s the visuals and vigorous action that allows ‘The Raid’ to stick out from any other action film. Due to the impressive cinematography, the film could equally be appreciated with or without that narrative. Gareth Evans certainly sets a standard. This world cinema piece genuinely feels like a Hollywood blockbuster and is surprisingly done on a minuscule budget of just over $1million. Hollywood eat your heart out!
Walking out of this film was similar to my experience of walking out of Drive.
I am fearful about this Hollywood remake is going to look like.