"I swear my face hurt coming out of the theater."
-Eric Kohn on seeing The Raid: Redemption.
I was in a little shock when my friend said he never watch "The Raid" movie franchise. My nationalism and patriotism fired up. The Raid franchise was the best Indonesian film in our lifetime. In the action film genre, perhaps it is one of the best in the world. I'm not being a chauvinist here.
Sgt. Jaka facing Mad Dog, the badass villain. (source)
If you're a movie freak, I bet you've heard about "The Raid" movie franchise. The Guardian reported it as "violent, intense and brilliant bulletfest from Indonesia that puts western action movies to shame." While Tim Robey from The Telegraph said that "The Raid is a film for which the adjective “awesome” might have been invented, but it’s so awesomely awesome you might want to teach it some new words."
When the first movie was released in Sundance film festival, people were surprised by the ultra-violence displayed in the film. It became a sudden hit. Action movie has a new bar: martial arts scenes should be treated more seriously. The use of long and wide shoot on a close combat fights scenes are crucial. No cut to cut editing, please. We want to see a real impact on a body being beaten. We want to feel the pain just by seeing a fight scene. As Eric Kohn wrote in his review: "Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since 'The Bourne Ultimatum' to instant shame."
Well, not all critics agree. Roger Ebert gave a negative review, he wrote "Have you noticed how cats and dogs will look at a TV screen on which there are things jumping around? It is to that level of the brain's reptilian complex that the film appeals."
But that is what exactly "The Raid" tries to deliver. The human primal instinct to fight, to survive. Gareth Evans, the Welsh director, teams up with Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhiyan -- both are martial arts experts turns into actors, they offered the ballet of fight choreography, shot with beautiful camerawork, delivered by actors and stunts that have real experiences in martial arts.
Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhiyan were no ordinary martial artist. They know how to pack a show, how to make the fight movements look good on camera. They both expert on Silat, traditional martial arts that developed in South East Asia. While Silat itself has many variations, the characteristic moves of Silat that Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhiyan used on the film was the close combat with rapid strikes. I asked Gareth Evans, the director, about the speed of Yayan's strike during a public screening.
"Did you speed it up through editing? Because sometimes my eyes hurt seeing the moves. It feels too fast"
"No," he answered. "It was his natural speed."
"Mmmmmm... Okay".
The audience applaud.
I once met Yayan Ruhiyan and I was shaking. Not because star struck or anything. Believe me, Yayan is a very humble man. I was shaking because I remember the terrifying Mad Dog, the villain he played in The Raid: Redemption. Mad Dog, just as his name, is a badass fighter that prefers a close hand to hand combat rather than a gunfight. Crazy motherfucker. I could feel the blood thirst in his eyes.
Mad Dog in action. (source)
Mad Dog as a meme material, this is the basic template. (source)
As an action film, The Raid delivered what an action film should be. The thin storyline, and get to the action as fast as possible. Perhaps the storyline was too thin. No room for character development, no deeper character motivation. That was the criticism for The Raid. But that's no longer the case for the sequel.
The Raid 2: Berandal displayed a wider scope of story and action. It's hard to top the ultra-violence fight scenes from the 1st film. But the 2nd film was doing that exactly. The Raid 2 accomplishes what it sets out to accomplish. The story world is wider, wilder, and the characterization is more complex. The action scenes were more than amazing. The sound design was perfect. You could feel each punch as a full body experience. Far superior to the predecessor. It has raises the bar for modern action filmmaking really high.
While the predecessor only set the story world in an abandoned apartment, the sequel expanded the story to the whole city. The final fight of the predecessor was built carefully, level by level, like a video game. In the sequel, we already get massive fight scenes since the early minute. As the story goes, the fight scenes going crazier and crazier. Always brutal. Total excitement for action aficionados. Everybody dies with a various killing method.
Hammer Girl. (source)
In The Raid 2: Berandal, there were many memorable fight scenes. One of them would be the iconic character of Hammergirl and Baseball Bat Boy. You can tell from their name. It was a girl hitting people with hammer claw, and a Boy beating people with a baseball bat. Oh yeah. (Play some Ramones song, please). I hope there will be a spinoff for this duo. They're really comical, with cool costumes and their fight moves were sick.
The most memorable would be the one dubbed as The Kitchen Fight scene. It's a 10 minutes long fight scene between two characters, nonstop, contains 195 shots, with minimal cut editing. I can't imagine the efforts to choreographed and filmed it. Too awesome. It was the most exhausting and hurtful fight scenes I've ever seen in my entire life.
The kitchen fight scene. (source)
I noticed that the high bar set by The Raid has influenced Hollywood. You can see the fighting scenes of Captain America: Winter Soldier. Slashfilm reported that the Russo brothers were big fan of The Raid, and admitted they studied the action scenes in that movie. I hope more action film will use the same approach.