The Raid

You could explain The Raid on the back of a beer mat.

Police at the bottom.

Crime lord at the top.

Everybody in between wants them dead.

That's basically it.

And that's brilliant.

The apartment block gives the movie a natural progression. Every corridor, stairwell, room and floor can introduce another problem, while the characters always understand the objective: survive long enough to keep moving.

The building isn't simply where the action takes place.

It's the structure of the entire film.

Once the exits disappear, the audience feels trapped inside it too.

Rama doesn't need to spend half the movie explaining why he's dangerous.

Eventually somebody attacks him.

Then we understand.

Iko Uwais brings astonishing speed to the fights, but what makes Rama work is the desperation underneath them. He isn't performing for an audience or competing for a trophy.

He's trying to stay alive.

That changes the rhythm of the action. Rama uses whatever space and opportunity he has because stopping isn't really an option.

Uwais was more than the film's star, too. Sony credits him alongside Yayan Ruhian with the action choreography, building on the pair's deep connection with pencak silat.

One of The Raid's greatest achievements was giving international audiences an unforgettable showcase for pencak silat.

The fights are fast without becoming impossible to follow.

Strikes flow into grappling. Bodies collide with walls, floors and furniture. Weapons appear and disappear as the situation changes.

And the environment constantly matters.

Sony's production history traces Evans's interest in the martial art back to a documentary project in Indonesia. That project introduced him to Iko Uwais; their collaboration eventually led, through Merantau, to The Raid.

This isn't a movie that happens to contain silat.

Silat is part of its DNA.

Some villains build empires.

Mad Dog would apparently rather beat somebody senseless.

That's what makes him such a perfect opponent for this movie.

Yayan Ruhian doesn't need elaborate speeches to make the character frightening. Mad Dog's enthusiasm for close-quarters combat tells us everything.

For him, fighting isn't an obstacle between himself and an objective.

Fighting is the objective.

And when the movie finally locks Rama and his brother into a room with him, The Raid delivers exactly the confrontation it has spent the film preparing us for.

It's exhausting.

It's vicious.

And it feels like nobody involved has remembered that human beings are supposed to have bones.

The Raid doesn't rely on the audience caring about explosions getting progressively larger.

It escalates through bodies, spaces and increasingly difficult fights.

That's why the violence feels so immediate.

The BBFC describes frequent strong bloody violence involving guns, blades and brutal close-quarters combat, which is a fairly clinical way of describing approximately ninety minutes of wondering how anybody survived filming the thing.

But underneath the brutality is extraordinary control.

The choreography remains readable. The geography of the rooms matters. And the performers possess the physical ability to make long exchanges convincing.

The Raid didn't invent great martial-arts choreography.

It reminded a new generation just how exciting it could be.