Die Hard Boiled? Review of The Raid

So, The Raid is awesome. That is a well documented fact. But just how awesome? From the opening shots of Rama, the rookie, saying a hushed goodbye to his pregnant wife and serving a punching bag a whirlwind of punches, slaps, elbows… there is a tangible sense of violent potential being wound up. This tight anticipation is held through the SWAT team’s initial, stealthy breach of the tenement block in which Welsh director Garth Evans conducts the ensuing tsunami of beautiful destruction. The team’s measured, professional approach is thrown to pot when a young look out lets cry “police!” - before a bullet cuts through his neck.

We are given a premise that has just enough justification to keep the plot on the back-burner for the best part of the film and not leave us feeling narratively unfulfilled. Let’s all be honest, no one turned up to see The Raid for its story. No, they came for the adrenaline shot to the heart. They came for what promised to be Die Hard Boiled.  The comparisons to Woo and McTiernan’s action pinnacles are founded on the giddy, violent euphoria that the film leaves you with (and the possibility of the best action film based pun in existence).   However, thematically and stylistically the film feels like the blood baptised love child of Ong Bak and Elite Squad. It is unequivocally the action that drives the film forward and that is no small feat. The film is phenomenally well shot. Okay, it’s not going to give Robby Muller a run for his money but, in the same way all they very best genre films are (Dark Water, The Vanishing, Drive), it is composed to within an inch of its life. The Raid shows you everything you need to see and at the angle and pace you need to see it from. And if you love filmic violence, shame on you, you will be bounding around in your chair, cackling with glee and wincing even though you love it.

To add some level of BBC balance, the moments of plot exposition are, on the whole, less than compelling but it never detracts from the ultimate pleasure of the film. If anything The Raid gets too good too soon. That’s not to say after seeing a fridge being used as an explosive that a four versus one machete fight is any less exhilarating, it’s just not any more so. Ultimately, The Raid is the best all out action film of the last decade and has scene that stand toe-to-toe with that corridor shoot out in Hard Boiled, that corridor brawl in Oldboy and that knife fight in The Man from Nowhere.