Kind of like "Oh, that movie is the best? SCREW YOU. It's not my best movie! My best movie is this one! The one I chose!" Isn't it amazing how much competition dictates everything we do in life?
Back to "The Raid," as I'll call it, since I refuse to acknowledge that ridiculous and hackneyed addendum to the end of the title. The movie certainly has one thing going for it - it knows what it wants to do, and it never stops doing it. Consistency is not one of the film's weaknesses. And what is it doing exactly? Well, I'll give you three guesses but you'll only need one.
Lots and lots of this.
There's this thing that Asian action films tend to do a lot that you would think would be a wholly American thing to do - which is absolute non-stop action. And I'm not talking about movies like "Machete" or "The Rock" or even "Dredd," a film "The Raid" drew numerous comparisons to. Those movies had a lot of action, yes, but there was some down time between explosions. Typically you got some story development. With Michael Bay you get crappy comedic relief. And with Uwe Boll, that's when you usually get some light nudity.
But with Asian films, once they start they just don't freaking stop. The action just keeps going and going and going until I start to wonder a few things. Mostly I start to wonder where all these people pouring into the room are coming from, why every single one of them knows kung-fu, and why - DEAR GOD WHY - none of them flinch at charging straight into the fists of a guy standing waist deep in a mountain of bodies that he has already personally dispatched. Oh sure, there's bloody corpses everywhere, all created by this death machine of a man who has already killed half the city with kung-fu that is clearly the strongest. Is the next guy flinging himself screaming at this monster just banking on the hope that he's gotten tired?
This guy - THIS guy's got his number. This is Random Goon #39's day to shine.
I know it's just a part of the genre. It's always been something that's bugged me about it, though. I just don't get why none of these anonymous thugs ever encounter morale problems when the hero has made chunky salsa from the organs of a regiment of them. Is there no survival instant at work at all? I think Zapp Brannigan might be secretly in command here.
"The Raid" is an Indonesian film about a SWAT team sent to eliminate a stronghold of criminals in an apartment building, which has become a nearly impregnable fortress. The attack begins well enough, but before too long they're spotted, the alarm is raised, and all hell breaks loose. From then on it's a non-stop barrage of endless gun-play and kung-fu as waves and waves of bad guys hurl themselves at the police officers. And since there are about 20 cops that go in, there's room in the script for a huge body count among both good and bad guys. This is particularly true in the first big round of fighting, where the police lose about 60% of their strength in a 15 minute stretch of time.
Our protagonist, Rama, played Iko Uwais, is resourceful and skilled enough to survive the first attack, and he and the few remaining officers split into 2 groups for reasons that I'm still not quite sure of. I personally would have wanted to stay together. Either way, Rama is now tasked with taking care of the wounded, finding an exit from this fortress, and accomplishing what they came to do in the first place, which is to capture the gang leader.
This whole process will involve fighting. A lot of fighting. And I'll give it this - When the action in "The Raid" is on, holy geez is it on. You don't even comprehend the level of "onness" involved. If "on" were a force of nature in this movie it'd be gravity, because it's inescapable. I think you get the idea.
And scenes like this. Oh my goodness...
There are moments during "The Raid" that just blew my mind, I'm not going to lie to you. Moments so hardcore in their violence and sheer badassery that it was all I could do to just say "Daaaaang that was awesome!" Not only was Iko Uwais a walking grain thresher with fists, costar Joe Taslim delivered just as much soul-punching destruction as the commander of the SWAT team. Both of them are relative nowcomers, but both could be major action leads today. Not in a few years. Not after a few more movies under their belts. Right the hell now. Put them in a movie with Jason Statham or something and proceed to make magic right out the thin damn air.
This is a rollicking good time at the movies. It's two hours of nothing but Iko Uwais throwing 15,000 punches per second into the faces of every bad guy in the world before crushing their windpipes and turning their vertebrae into a fine powder. You think Sparta had madness? Try Indonesia. If Leonidas had been half this badass sending 1 Spartan would have been considered overkill. Faces are smashed rapidfire into walls, kicks explode kneecaps, people are hurled into walls like they're rag dolls, necks snap like celery stalks, and so many bullets are fired that the pile of casings could be seen from space.
If that's what you signed on for, bon anniversaire.
But here's the part where I kick myself for being that guy. I know. I know. I hate that I have to be that guy, too. There is a point in "The Raid," and I can pinpoint it exactly, where it just becomes too damn much. It does the unthinkable, and becomes boring. Yes, all that intense, thrilling action actually became a chore to watch. I feel like such a jerk for saying that.
The point when it became just too dang much first reared its head with about 25 minutes left to go. The remaining good guys bust into a drug lab and start wrecking the place in a scene that overstays its welcome a bit. Most of that has to do with the fact that by this point the fight choreography has really shown all it's going to show you, so you start seeing the same moves recycled from earlier fights. Namely all of them. Up to this point the fists and other appendages had been flying so fast that it was easy to miss repeated moves, but at that point enough time has gone by so that you get into the swing of things, and it's easy to spot that it's really the same moves you've been seeing the whole time.
That's the first problem, but then that drug lab scene just goes on and on and on and on. And it was like I was saying earlier with the random bad guys having no problem throwing themselves at certain doom - I don't understand why they continue attacking him like they're running a conga line when he is clearly out of their league and laying waste to the faces of everyone who dares challenge him. They're like freaking lemmings that know a little kung-fu. And they just don't stop. It got to feeling like that scene goes on for 15 minutes. I think the credits said it best when it got up to "Drug's Lab Guard #21." That's not a joke, either.
And then we have the final boss fight. This is when "The Raid" completely flew off the rails and got laughable in its excess. Not the good kind of laughable, the boring kind. Yayan Ruhian plays The Mad Dog, an underboss of the main bad guy who is just a walking ball of crazy. When Rama and his brother square off with him in a 2 on 1 fight to the death, it is so over-the-top and insanely drawn out that it just gets stupid.
True enough, at the start, it's some of the best fighting in the movie, although I'd give the best fight to the one between The Mad Dog and Joe Taslim. But here, all three of these guys are taking so much punishment (especially Rama after having gone through everyone else getting there) that it just got absurd. The only equivalent I can give is to ask you to imagine Rocky Balboa going through all the fights in all 6 movies one after the other. That's the level of beatdown we're talking here. And they're still going. At that point I was wondering if they had entered any cheat codes. Hell, the bad guy has a shard of broken glass the size of a Gatorade bottle in his neck at one point and he still keeps going like it only mildly irritates him.
I know it's a silly nitpick but it really did come across as distracting, because it was so stupid. The dudes in "Dragonball Z" didn't take this much punishment. And they fell from orbit on occasion. And survived planets exploding.
Is he trying to reach Super Saiyan or something? Stay down, fool!
In all honestly though, had that fight and the one before it been cut in half, "The Raid" would have been a fantastic movie. It's fun, it's brutal, and despite some obnoxious abuse of shaky cam it's a well filmed, well choreographed action film. Perhaps some lessons in excess could have been culled from the experience, but "The Raid" still did what it set out to do.
THE BOTTOM LINE - I wanted to like "The Raid" more than I actually ended up liking it, but it was still a lot of fun. It's just that the last half hour really started getting on my nerves, as Rama became less of a cop and more of an "action hero" if you get my meaning. But hey, if you want action, this is no joke. But watch it in the original language. The dub sucks hard.
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