The Raid: Redemption (2011)
1 Ruthless Crime Lord, 20 Elite Cops, 30 Floors of Hell
Tonight’s video is brought to you by Raid: Shadow Legends! Just kidding, it has nothing to do with that at all honestly, outside of both starting with Raid and having a sub-section title after it. Nah, tonight I promised my audience something with cops, drug dealers, and absolutely brutal hits. Time to escape the bounds of American action and the relative safety of it’s job requirements - no, tonight you get to wonder just how many hospital bills were involved in those hits. Wear your uniform with pride, tonight is The Raid: Redemption.
I understand that it’s only “Redemption” here state side or whatever because a conflict with getting the rights for just “The Raid”, which in turn kind of makes it sound like this is the sequel to something (which it isn’t, even though it does have a sequel). I also understand I reviewed the sequel before I did this one - which is a little funny since I did watch this one before the sequel, I just did so before all this review shenanigans really kicked off. Anyways, double-layer story of sorts here that keeps it nice and simple, but with a few twists. Main-line story is that of a Raid on a criminal element’s complex to take down the big bad leader guy. Sub-story involves that Fast and Furious favorite - family. The latter is much less complicated than the former, but neither one is completely forgotten throughout the run time.
Now, I’d love to tell you that I listened to a dubbed version, but that’s not an option so I once again get to default to “I think line delivery is done well, but I haven’t the foggiest idea in a smokey swamp what’s going on vocally outside of I think that guy is actually hurt from the sounds he’s making.” Do you hear the lines fine amidst all the music and sounds? Yes, balance is pretty good. Further complicating the situation is that this isn’t one of those slower foreign languages where it gives you time to try and pretend you know whats getting said - no, this is Indonesian, probably the fastest series of short-blowback phonetics an ear can pick up. I can’t hope to attest to the lines getting delivered as intended, and literally have only the body language and facial expressions and on some occasions the tone they use to go off of.
On that front, the actors do a great job though. There is no lost translation when it comes to how people are moving and behaving. Pain, anger, shock and awe - they all wear it on their faces wonderful. This is particularly great because the amount of really fun action scenes, but it also helps you get a feel for some of the characters, as there isn’t really much in the line of character building beyond the main character. To be fair, the movie really doesn’t have time to get into it all with all that’s going on in this one confined location. So yes, I may not be able to understand a lick of what they are saying, but I know exactly what they mean thanks to the actors giving it what for. Yes, even some of the non-characters do a splendid job here.
Somebody is gettin swat’ed.
Enough of me talking about characters and acting though, I know what you are here for - the dang action scenes. Who boy is this thing a powerhouse. The amount of time that had to go into choreographing some of these fights had to be absurd, but I’m am very grateful they took that time because it all looks amazing. Blows can be downright brutal, and despite the absolute chaos going on you don’t ever lose track of whats happening. You’ll even get some nice wide pulls of the camera so you can really see whats going on.If you have a friend who loves action and hasn’t seen this movie, it’s well worth watching it with them just to hear their reaction. The final battle in particular is just an absolute knock-out, and although I’m not sure what the original soundtrack was like at this point, in the version I watched it’s now filed away as “the Doom room” in my head.
The audio is actually pretty good here. Like I just alluded to, the not rated Redemption version has a different soundtrack than the original one, and although I can’t speak comparatively about the two, the one I watched is nice, heavy, and tense - which fits the movie perfectly. Sounds punching out of meaty folks connecting with much harder objects will make you squint a little as the accompanying violence makes you flinch over how much it looks like it hurts. That said, I have seen far more violent movies -especially in something like the horror genre - but this thing definitely doesn't shy away from cutting open a persons leg to take them out of a fight. You won’t have to suffer innards-as-outers levels of violence though, for the squeamish types.
Now, surely a lot of people who come across this will probably end up doing so because the saw Dredd and a friend told them how it was like an American comic take this one - and they aren’t really entirely wrong about that. Cops, drugs, epic unbalanced battles - there’s a lot of comparisons to make. The good thing is both are great fun to watch, but they also manage to be very different at how they deliver that fun - Dredd is much more into shooting then the brutal back and forth flesh-and-bone battles going on in Raid. This in turn helps make this far more desirable for the crowd that wants some tense martial arts over gunplay, although there is still some gun fights in this one. It’s an action classic, and i don’t know anyone even though I’m sure they exist that doesn’t think of this as one of the prime examples of action cinema - especially outside of the Hollywood circuit.
4 against one? How unfair.
So should you watch it? If you like action and martial arts, heck yes! If you aren’t a fan of violence or reading subtitles, maybe. I mean, you’ll need the subtitles to get any of the oomph out of the plot, but they don’t interrupt the action scenes at all, so if you were say an action fan who hated reading, I think you would still love the movie for the action and just wish it had some form of dub floating about. Honestly, the thing is a great movie in my opinion, and I’m more than happy to have it in my collection of action flicks.