Raiding The House Of Pain

There are some movies where the evidence of it being exceptional are the uninhibited giggles emanating from your mouth courtesy of your highly impressed nerd brain. This uncontrollable joyous geekout might be due to a certain awe inspiring cinematic image (The Balrog in Fellowship of the Ring), a line of dialogue (“DRAKE! WE ARE LEAVING!!!” from Aliens) or, most commonly, a gratuitous display of ultra-violence (the last half an hour of Peter Jackson’s Braindead).

Indonesian action film The Raid falls perfectly into that latter category too with the most gigglesom display of hyper-violent action film I’ve seen since John Woo’s masterpiece Hard Boiled. It’s a simple siege movie reminiscent of the best of John Carpenter/Neil Marshall/Walter Hill with an elite group of tactical cops going into a gang controlled apartment block to take out the all-powerful drug lord once and for all. It’s a simple tale which allows for plenty of skull splintering fighting, shooting, stabbing, punching and brutal, brutal death. The key here isn’t so much that the action is brilliantly shot (in long McTiernan-like takes so we can appreciate the fight choreography or to revel in the multiple crimson fountain bullet hits) or edited (like Woo, Welsh director Gareth Hughes treats this like a ballet of mayhem) it’s that it takes martial arts to the next level. I’ve seen martial arts movies before but not when the combatants are using knives along with the chop-socky . The result is brain jarringly awesome…a shock and awe tactic that never wears out its welcome.

Surprisingly there’s deep enough character relationships and an intriguing enough story going on to compliment the action so this isn’t just another exercise in surface level action. Absolutely amazing to behold, The Raid is an experience that will leave you breathless. Hands down the best straight-forward action film since The Matrix.