"The Raid: Redemption" is a movie that pulls no punches. Or maybe that's all it pulls. It's been a long while since I've seen a film so relentless, so brutal, and so unapologetically violent. Writer/Director Gareth Evans' film is a non-stop barrage of fisticuffs, shoot-outs, and explosions. It is a well choreographed exercise in action movie mayhem and it succeeds wholly in its intentions. If you want a nuanced screenplay, in-depth characterizations, or an intricate plot--"The Raid: Redemption" might not be your first choice of entertainment. Don't get me wrong, I like and expect those things too. But if you give yourself over to the visceral experience of this down and dirty movie, it provides more thrills and excitement than a slate of Hollywood blockbusters. If you like action films, this micro-budgeted indie flick shot in Indonesia (yes, it's subtitled but, believe me, the dialogue is relatively minimal) has got to be on the top of your must-see list.

Evans reunites with the star, Iko Uwais, of his previous film "Merantau." While "Merantau" showed promise, it was plagued with a relatively uninspired plot and some serious pacing issues. While I'd still recommend it to fans of the genre, it didn't fully come together in the way that I hoped it would. Both Uwais, as a martial artist and a screen presence, and Evans, as a creative force, have upped their game in "The Raid: Redemption." Uwais plays an upstanding cop who is part of a SWAT team in Jakarta. The plot is very simple on the surface. The officers must infiltrate a slum apartment building that houses a gangland overlord and his band of criminal mercenaries. But on their way to the penthouse suite, they must fend off countless attacks as their numbers dwindle. There is a little political back story, as well, with corruption and greed factoring into the equation as to just why the building is being raided in the first place. You need more plot? Too bad.

What you get instead is relentless action. The pacing is dynamic and the tension escalates throughout. There are some terrific combat scenes, lots of gunfire, and an endless array of hand-to hand fight sequences. The martial arts aspect to the fighting is exciting and extremely well done without being too over the top. "The Raid: Redemption" did quite well on the film festival circuit (winning audience awards in Amsterdam, Toronto, and Dublin) and with the majority of mainstream critics (including raves from the Los Angeles Times and USA Today). The reason seems very simple. The movie doesn't aspire to be anything other than what it is. Evans focused on making a brutal and exhausting bit of ultra-violent escapism. And that's exactly what he and his team delivers. Is it a perfect film? Not particularly. Could it have benefited from improved storytelling? Probably. But what it does provide more than compensates for what it doesn't. In the end, this movie may not be for everyone. That's perfectly fine. But I suspect that the film's reputation will only grow in certain circles making it a true cult classic a few years down the line. About 4 1/2 stars, I'll round up for the sheer madness of it all! KGHarris, 6/12.

Included Bonus Features:
Commentary with Writer/Director Gareth Evans
6 behind-the-scenes video blogs with Gareth Evans
Behind the Music: Featurette with Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park and composer Joe Trapanese
Inside the Score: A trailer teaser for Mike Shinoda's first feature score
An Evening with Gareth Evans, Mike Shinoda and Joe Trapanese feaurette
Conversation with Gareth Evans and Mike Shinoda: Details on the hard shoot, score, stunts, and themes
An Anatomy of a Scene: Outlines hole drop sequence
THE RAID TV Show Ad (circa 1994): Spoof of an actual 1994 Japanese anime TV commercial
Claycat's The Raid: Lee Hardcastle's UK claymation short film with a Mike Shinoda music score

Here's some fun math for you...This entire film cost as much to make as ~52 seconds of Transformers 3. I'll say that again. For the same price, you could make either a) the best action flick since John Woo's Hong Kong masterpieces, or b) 52 seconds of bloated PG13 mediocrity. Stunning.

In any case, the second collaboration between Gareth Evans, Iko Uwais, and Yayan Ruhian demonstrates just how far you can take the form. The plot is simple and straightforward, and set up with incredible economy. A few carefully edited scenes and a smattering of dialogue puts all the pieces in place, then it's 90-odd minutes of exquisitely crafted mayhem.

Technically, the film is very well shot. The camera work is both fluid and at times surprisingly creative (they pull off a great drop-down shot early on using one camera but two cameramen). Most importantly though, it's choreographed into the action itself. The camera is the 3rd (or 4th or 10th) player in the fight scenes, moving with the actors to give the audience a clear view of the lightning fast techniques while highlighting the incredibly kinetic nature of the fights themselves. And kinetic is the only way to describe the fighting. The choreography in The Raid is the some of the most aggressive I've ever seen. There's no dancing around, no sizing each other up, no slow-mo, and definitely no waiting around for a downed opponent to regain his feet so the fight can continue. The actors go after each other like their lives really are at stake, attacking relentlessly from whatever position they find themselves in, using whatever weapon is available. Silat (the primary martial art on display here) is a viciously practical close-quarters system, and it's full range of open-handed combination strikes, knees, elbows, and grappling techniques is on full display; along with some knife-work that's almost too fast to keep track of.

This is a particular treat for martial arts fans who have seen a lot of Karate, Kung Fu, or Muay Thai films. The mobility and variety of attack angles employed by Silat fighters is distinct and makes the already aggressive choreography doubly unpredictable. These guys never stop moving. The stunt work is top notch, and you really get a feeling throughout the movie that these guys are hungry for it. This is their big shot to bring Indonesian martial arts to a western audience, and they pull out all the stop to make it happen. While the level of violence has been criticized by some as being gratuitous and misanthropic, what I see is an incredibly driven crew of young, talented Indonesians going balls-out to earn their indigenous martial art a permanent place in the genre canon. As far as I'm concerned, they succeed and then some.

One final thing that sets The Raid apart from most other martial arts flicks is the weird but successful blending with the survival-horror genre. In between fights, Evans ratchets up the tension as the dwindling number of survivors try to evade roving bands of bloodthirsty killers. This alternation between tension building stealth and explosive action keeps you on the edge of your seat pretty much the entire time. It's a very smart way to do things, and avoids the usual curse of foot-taping "I'm bored, when's the next fight" the plagues a lot of genre films. Not that there's any shortage of fight scenes. I can think of plenty of martial arts movies for which the climactic showdown was less exciting than every single action sequence in The Raid.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. This is the new high water mark for pure, unadulterated martial-arts mayhem. I can't wait to see what these guys come up with next.

Writer/Director Gareth Evans learned his lesson from MERANTAU, his earlier collaboration with former truck driver and now budding martial arts star Iko Uwais. MERANTAU exhibited some first-rate martial arts mayhem but was crippled by Evans' meandering pace and flat explorations of the lead character's culture. In THE RAID: REDEMPTION (or "Serbuan maut") Evans sets us up with everything we need to know about premise and characters within the first five minutes. From then on, brother, it's best that you grab hold of something. Nerves will be jangled and eyes glued and behinds parked precariously on the edges of seats.

Sub-text and this film go together like Merchant Ivory cinema and Uwe Boll. And yet, sometimes, there's something to be said for guerrilla filmmaking. THE RAID: REDEMPTION is strictly no frills, production values-wise. But Gareth Evans makes the most of his shoestring budget and minimalist plot. He turns the focus on the action sequences. You know how, in martial arts films, the plot merely serves as a framing device for the fighty fights? Here, the plot makes a cameo appearance and then gets the ef out of Dodge lest it catch a vicious Iko Uwais boot to the head.

In the slums of Jakarta looms a squalid 30-story highrise, an apartment complex which the vile ganglord, Tama Rivadi, rents out to assassins, psychopaths, gangsters, and drvg traffickers. Tama's impenetrable sanctuary has long been regarded as a "no-go zone" for the police. Until today. Today an elite squad composed of twenty police officers has just gotten the go-ahead to infiltrate Tama's fortress and capture Tama himself. What are the odds they could do this on the Q?

The squad manages to systematically secure only the first few bottom floors before the cat is let out the bag. From then on, it's an apocalyptic fight for survival. There's a twofer in this one: RAID: THE REDEMPTION is most recognizably a martial arts film, but there are elements of the survival horror genre peppered in. Tama Rivadi is quick to offer lifelong tenancy to them residents what take out the coppers.

Get your raw thrills, get your jaw dropped. Gareth Evans and Iko Uwais have created something primal here, and credit Evans, too, for establishing an oppressive atmosphere. I would not want to be caught in that lethal tenement, with homicidal maniacs swarming up on me. THE RAID: REDEMPTION is an Indonesian film (with English sub-titles) and, as such, it gleefully showcases the nation's traditional martial arts discipline, Pencak Silat. What Evans constructs with the action sequences is stunning. He adeptly stages the tense gunplays. But when the ammo runs out and the firearms discarded, what's left is intense, close-quarters, I can smell your breath, hand-to-hand combat, and that's when the film achieves another level of excitement. Evans applies deft camera work to capture the speed, grace and brutality of Pencak Silat. Iko Uwais plays the unassuming rookie cop, Rama, who only wants to survive the mission and return to his pregnant wife. Uwais demonstrates a quiet appeal; he's certainly got more of an acting presence than Tony Jaa. And Iko Uwais in motion is something to behold. I'd put his electrifying marathon hallway fight and, later, his extended brawl with the machete gang against any other fight scenes captured on film. Uwais and Yayan Ruhian - who plays Tama's vicious lieutenant "Mad Dog" - choreographed the fights, and what they've come up with is UNREAL!

And just when you think the film's action couldn't top itself, it does. I don't know if these fighty fights are that original or inventive, but, damn, they're executed with such verve and swagger and shot with such clarity that they deserve all the plaudits and hyperbole. The pulsating score only punctuates the electrifying symphony of violence. I won't go too much into my favorite kill, only that it involves the jagged remains of a door and that one baddie gets rudely introduced to that.

The pace blisters. Even the quieter moments are laced with nervous anxiety. There's enough "acting" done that you do end up caring about certain characters and what befalls them. Ray Sahetapy nails it as the deliciously malevolent ganglord Tama. Joe Taslim lends solid presence as the experienced Sergeant Jaka, one of my favorite characters in the film. THE RAID: REDEMPTION won't escape comparisons to ONG BAK and DISTRICT B13, and that's fine. Moment for moment, in terms of relentless pace and sustained suspense, RAID is superior to those other two, especially ONG BAK. Is Tony Jaa still a hermit in the woods? Can he still handle a goon so that the poor bastard goes hurtling backwards on a trajectory across empty space and nearly cracks in half against a lower railing? Iko Uwais just did that.

Ear to the ground news is that there's already a sequel in the works. I'm not sure how Iko Uwais plans to top this film without setting himself on fire. Niche market, my butt. Even the more sophisticated crowds owe it to themselves to see this one. After all, THE RAID: REDEMPTION is an independent foreign movie. It's practically Merchant Ivory.

The DVD's bonus stuff (with English sub-titles):

- Audio Commentary with writer/director Gareth Evans
- 6 Video Blogs: includes the cast undergoing military bootcamp, the cast rehearsing their fight choreography, behind the scenes of Rama's fight with the machete gang, Sgt. Jaka's fight with Mad Dog, the hole drop sequence, and much, much more (totals 00:39:30 minutes)
- An Evening with Gareth Evans, Mike Shinoda (of Linkin Park), and composer Joe Trapanese - a moderated onstage interview (00:40:38 minutes)
- Behind the Music with Mike Shinuda and Joe Trapanese (00:11:05 minutes)
- Anatomy of a Scene with Gareth Evans - the director talks you thru the process of shooting the Hole Drop scene (00:02:15)
- In Conversation - Gareth Evans and Mike Shinoda Q & A each other (00:11:31)
- Inside the Score - a short promo featuring Mike Shinoda, clips from THE RAID, and rave blurbs from film critics (00:01:22)
- Claycat's THE RAID - a claymation spoof of the film... with cats (00:02:56)
- THE RAID TV show ad, circa 1994 (00:00:44 seconds)
- Theatrical Trailer