Review: The Raid 1 & 2

Dir. Gareth Evans (2011 & 2014)

I’m going to go on record here, I believe these movies to be some of the best action and martial arts films of all time. Very rarely does a movie leave me feeling physically exhausted but pumped with adrenaline after a viewing, and both these films deliver heaping doses. On a personal note, I LOVE seeing the credit “written and directed by”. To me it signals that the film is more the result of a single person’s vision rather than the corporate checklist of compromise for the sake of marketability that many films are. Though the film boasts an Indonesian cast and was shot in the country, both are written and directed by Welsh borne Gareth Evans.

The first Raid film is often unfairly compared with the 2012 Dredd movie, despite coming out a year earlier due to their very similar premises. Protagonists must work through an entire skyscraper filled with drug runners, gangsters and lowlifes to reach the crime boss at the top. There’s nothing particularly new about this concept, yet The Raid tackles it with a level of perfection seen in few other films. The action is gorgeously choreographed, with reactions seemingly coming from the characters in a desperate struggle rather than feeling like the pre-choreographed dance moves that often plagues movies of this kind. The hits come fast and land with a cringe-inducing sense of physicality. Our camera is always moving but never shaky, any nausea that comes will not be from motion sickness but from the sheer level of continuous near-sadism displayed. 

Violence in this film is relatively realistic and not at all restrained, the second film particularly ups the ante when it comes to realistic gore. Every head-punch, gunshot to the neck, knife wound, elbow blow, you name it, is captured in unflinching detail and usually by a camera that operates from a distance...giving the audience a full view of everything that happens. This allows the actors to really perform full sequences and gives a feeling of authenticity to the action. The pace is relentless and the narrative efficient, yet nothing feels rushed. We learn nothing of the vast majority of the players aside from enough to care about our protagonist which, in a lesser film, would be a major detractor...here, such detail would only slow things down. Every time I watch this one I have to keep reminding myself to breathe.

Musically, the first film alternates between ambient electronic layers of pure unfiltered dread and all out go-for-the-throat industrial blasts. It creates a sense of near-tangible atmosphere and dread.

The first raid film is a predatory animal. Sleek, efficient, beautiful, brutal. It’s gruesome and it never never lets up, but there’s a certain organic respect this brings when combined with the high level of artistry on display. There’s not much more to say about the first film, it’s strengths and weaknesses are one and the same. It does exactly what it sets out to do, in my opinion better than any film attempting the same thing before or since, no more no less.

The Raid 2 keeps the realism-based yet relentless violence, characters, and ending of the first, but adds a narrative that is complex, large, and unexpectedly intriguing. If the closest equivalent to the first Raid film is Dredd or Ogn Bak, then the closest equivalent to the Raid 2 would be something like The Godfather. Though the stakes are raised significantly, the story is given time to breathe. A little too much time in spots, a full 50 min longer than the first movie The Raid 2 pursues some story threads that, while very memorable, could have been left on the cutting room floor. There are some very interesting ideas at play here and there are moments where the film could have really leveraged some truly emotional character beats, yet it mostly misses the opportunity. These missteps make The Raid 2 far less accessible than the first film, but the higher production values and emphasis on a more cinematic aesthetic may make up for this. As far as living up to and expanding upon the characters, tone, world, and narrative of the first raid film, The Raid 2 works masterfully, giving the audience everything they loved about the first and almost too much more.

Should you see The Raid films? If absolutely brutal martial arts and unrelenting tension within a grim criminal underworld sounds like your shot of adrenaline, then I fully recommend the Raid films to you.

-Josh Evans