Image: Image: PT Merantau Films When there’s nowhere left to run or hide… you fight or die. Replacing guns with knives, fists and even walls, Evans’ instances of long takes don’t quite reach the lengths of Woo’s in terms of running time and scope, but they possess a similarly hypnotizing fluidity that provides an almost balletic barrage of carnage. In regards to other Eastern action cinema, John Woo’s Hard Boiled is an unmistakable influence, particularly its notorious hospital-set final act. The film effectively becomes a traditionally Western siege film but with the addition of martial arts, to describe it in rudimentary terms, allowing for such curious sights as an Indonesian police officer defeating machete-wielding criminals with his bare hands while a brooding score reminiscent of John Carpenter’s musical output plays over the proceedings. Fists, blades, and creative use of the apartment surroundings become the dominant tools of combat, and the silat martial arts of star Iko Uwais and others fuel some absolutely mesmerizing, brutal action sequences. The unit’s siege begins with heavy gunplay associated with those cited American inspirations like Die Hard, but the action gradually gravitates away from bullets as its source of bloodshed. It feels silly and somewhat patronizing to attribute Evans’ Western roots combined with an Indonesian production as a defining catalyst for The Raid’s success as a film, but an effective combination of action cinema styles of both the East and West is definitely one of its strongest elements. With the lights cut off, all exits blocked and a hive of the city’s most deadly criminals looking to exterminate them, the team must fight their way out to survive. The members of the unit, protagonist Rama among them, suddenly find themselves stranded and easy targets on the sixth floor. Tasked with raiding the fortress and capturing the vicious drug lord who runs it, an elite police team enters the building while under the cover of pre-dawn darkness and silence, only for an unexpected witness to reveal their presence to the criminals in charge. A derelict apartment building in the heart of Jakarta’s slums acts as a seemingly impenetrable safe house for a ruthless gangster and an array of killers and thugs.
Made in Indonesia but directed by a Welshman, the simple but effective plot of Gareth Evans’ film is almost like a mix of two of its clear influences, Die Hard and Assault on Precinct 13. The Raid is an action thriller with unmistakable, specific influences, but one that combines them with its own unique qualities to provide a particularly potent collection of thrills.
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