Dredd Vs. The Raid: A Mini-Review Series - The Raid: Redemption (2011)

Written In September 2014

Hey, Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, I’ve got no beef with you guys most of the time, I like most of what you guys pick for your artsy fartsy awards, I especially liked these two in fact

But could I make a humble suggestion? Make a category for best choreography.

I mean seriously, as much crap as we give movies like Step Up or Man of Tai Chi, they still have darn impressive choreography. And stuff like that takes a LOT of time, skill, and technique to put together. That kind of stuff takes a combination of great cinematography, great editing, and intense practice. I mean just look at this sequence. Pretty awesome right? Now imagine how much time it took to practice that sequence, then how much time they spent filming it, and how much time they spent editing it together to make it look good. I think that’s the kind of stuff that deserves some recognition? You know what I mean academy? Wait! You, the person reading this, AREN’T a member of the Oscar committee? Well then what am I talking to you for?!?! Get out!

You wanna hear more? Hmm…

Eh, alright guys! You seem okay, get your butt over to the synopsis and we’ll chat more.

Plot Summary Taken From Wikipedia:

The film opens with Indonesian SWAT officer Rama praying, practising silat and bidding goodbye to his wife, who is pregnant with his child.

Rama joins a 20-man elite police squad inclduing Officer Bowo, Sergeant Jaka, and Lieutenant Wahyu for a raid on an apartment block in Jakarta’s slums. The team intends to capture crime lord Tama Riyadi, who owns the block and lets criminals around the city rent rooms under his protection. Arriving undetected, the team sweeps the first floors and subdues various criminal tenants, they temporarily detain an innocent tenant delivering medicine to his sick wife. Continuing undetected to the sixth floor, the team is spotted by a young lookout, who raises the alarm before he is shot and killed by Wahyu.

Tama calls in reinforcements, who ambush the police force, killing and maiming a majority of them. Cutting the lights, Tama announces over the PA system that the police are trapped on the sixth floor stairwell, and he will grant free permanent residence to those who kill the intruders. In the darkness, the team is soon ambushed by shooters from above and behind, and Jaka learns from Wahyu that the mission is not officially sanctioned by the police command; nobody knows their location and no backup or reinforcements will arrive. Fleeing into an empty apartment, Officer Bowo is shot and injured. To save him, Rama constructs animprovised explosive device that kills the pursuing tenants. With more antagonists approaching, the team splits into two groups covertly: Jaka, Wahyu, and Dagu retreat to the fifth floor, while Rama and Bowo ascend to the seventh.

Fighting their way to the apartment of the tenant they earlier released, Rama and Bowo plead with him to help them; although his sick wife urges him to not get involved, he reluctantly agrees and hides the officers in a secret passage. A machete gang arrives and ransacks the man’s apartment, but when they fail to find Rama and Bowo, they eventually leave. After giving medical attention to Bowo, Rama leaves him with the couple to search for Jaka’s team, however, he crosses paths again with machete gang. He manages to dispatch one member and flee, but forced to fight them with his bare-hands. Rama defeats and kills most of the gang, including their leader who he uses as safety when he jumps out of a window and to an apartment below. He then continues his search, only to be captured by Andi, Tama’s right hand man. It is then revealed that Rama and Andi are estranged brothers, and that Rama signed up for the mission to search for Andi and convince him to return home, at the urging of their father.

Concurrently, Jaka and his group are found by Mad Dog, Tama’s ruthless henchman. Wahyu flees, and Jaka orders Dagu to follow Wahyu. Mad Dog captures Jaka, but, instead of shooting Jaka, Mad Dog challenges him to hand-to-hand combat. After Mad Dog defeats and kills Jaka, he drags the corpse to an elevator. Andi tells Rama to wait before leaving and meets up with Mad Dog. However, Tama has seen Andi talk to Rama on the numerous hidden cameras in the building. Realizing Andi’s betrayal when he didn’t return with a corpse, Tama stabs Andi in the hand and turns him over to Mad Dog.

Rama regroups with Wahyu and Dagu, who go on to fight through a narcotics lab, and they head for Tama on the 15th floor. Rama, finding Andi being beaten by Mad Dog, separates from Wahyu and Dagu to save him. Mad Dog allows him to free Andi and fights both brothers simultaneously. Initially Mad Dog has the upper hand, but after an intense and grueling battle, he is eventually overpowered and killed by the duo.

Meanwhile, Wahyu and Dagu confront Tama, only for Wahyu to betray and kill Dagu. Wahyu takes Tama hostage with the intention of using him to escape, but Tama taunts Wahyu by revealing that Tama has been waiting for the team before the events of the movie began and Wahyu was set up by his corrupt higher-ups; even if Wahyu escapes, he will be killed later. Wahyu kills Tama and attempts suicide, only to find that he has no bullets left.

Andi uses his influence over the tenants to allow Rama to leave with Bowo and a detained Wahyu. The tenant watches from a window and grins with delight. Andi also hands over numerous blackmail recordings Tama made of corrupt officers taking bribes, hoping that Rama can use them to his benefit. Rama asks Andi to come home, but Andi refuses, due to his acclimation to his criminal lifestyle. Before Rama leaves, Andi asserts he can protect Rama in his role as a criminal boss, but that Rama could not do the same for him.

Andi turns around and walks back to the apartment block with a grin that breaks into a wide-smile, whilst Rama, with Wahyu and an injured Bowo, exits to an uncertain future.

So here’s my question for you all dear readers, is the fact that The Raid is getting an American remake really such a bad thing?

Just hear me out. I mean you have good talent on board already with Frank Grillo, who has stated he’s a big fan of the original film, and Taylor Kitsch being cast and Red Hill director, Patrick Hughes, filling in for Gareth Evans. And if you’re gonna comment on how Expendables 3 sucked, let me just say, that the first two movies were just an ego trip, the third one was destined to suck no matter who was behind the camera. As for the martial arts, well the studio is trying hard to get the original film’s choreographers, Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, to actually come back to train the actors for the film.

And if you’re going to pull the “IT DOESN’T NEED TO BE REMADE!” Card, well then you’re an idiot. Batman didn’t need to be rebooted after Joel Schumacher’s Batman & Robin, but it got one anyway, and guess what, we got one of the best trilogies ever made out of the deal. Christian Nyby’s The Thing From Another World didn’t need to be remade, but guess what, it did get remade and we got one of the best science fiction films ever made out of that deal.

No movie ever NEEDS to exist, but guess what, studios like money and artists like to experiment by making their version of a pre-existing movie. Did you know Martin Scorsese’s The Departed was a remake of a Chinese film called Internal Affairs? Did you also know that said remake is what finally scored Scorsese an Oscar? Remakes are not destined to suck. The only movies I believe that are destined to suck are these ones

So let’s just consider the fact that this movie won’t tossed out by Paramount Pictures and Michael Bay, they’ll be put out by Sony (a studio based in the far east) and a little known indie director with only two credits under his belt. What’s that mean? It means this guy isn’t some studio lackey, like the guy who made this

Or some disenchanted dandy who’s literally only making movies because it puts bread on the table, like the guy who made this

He’s an actual creative personality who’s making movies because he loves making movies. AND, here’s the kicker.

An American Remake will attract attention to the original. Which means, even if it sucks more people will go and check out the ORIGINAL movie. Let’s talk money here, The Raid: Redemption, and it’s sequel, The Raid: Berandal, have a combined gross of $20.6 million. If this remake is even remotely worth a damn (or if Sony markets it well), based on Sony’s past releases so far this year, it’ll make somewhere around $250 million. Now let’s say just half of that comes from the United States. So around here, the average movie ticket costs about $8.15 (ridiculous, i know), by this logic, basic math would dictate that if the movie makes $125 million in the US then 15.4 million Americans would’ve paid to see this movie, that doesn’t seem like much but let’s consider something else. According to DVD and Blu-Ray sales, around $7.1 million worth of people bought a copy of The Raid: Redemption in the US, and according to this site, about $2.7 million was made off people buying copies of The Raid on DVD, and $4.4 million was brought off the Blu-Ray copies. Now most DVDs are worth about $8.15, so that’s 331288 people who bought the thing on that format, and since most Blu-Rays cost about $18.55, that means that format grabbed 237197 customers. That’s a total of 568485 people who bought The Raid. So that means 14.9 million more people are aware of the original Raid’s existence and now have incentive to seek out a copy of the original movie. And you know what people do when they LIKE a movie? They tell their immediate circle of friends about it, they tell their coworkers about it, they tell their family about it, they spread the knowledge of this movie’s existence. If those 14.9 million people tell just one more person about this awesome Indonesian martial arts flick and then they see it, we now have 29.8 million people who think that The Raid: Redemption is the sickest martial arts flick they’ve ever seen.

So can you take that gun off my temple now, so I can talk about the actual movie now?

PROS:

• Iko Uwais as Rama. What I like about this character is he's ultimately just a good guy in a building full of very not good people. His most immediate desire is to save his friends, get the job done, and go home to his wife and baby. I also really like his sense of loyalty, his brother may be a con but he’s still his blasted brother. His boss maybe a crooked two-bit jerk, but he’s still a cop through and through. Bowo may’ve been a complete jerk to him on the bus, but he’s still one of his teammates and he’s still a fellow officer, so he’ll see to it he gets somewhere safe and lives to see proper medical attention.
• Ray Sahetapy’s Tama Riyadi is probably one of my favorite characters in the movie. He’s got the laid back slick presence that makes watching him do bad things a lot of fun. I especially love his opening scene where he’s got a line of guys on the floor in front of his desk and he just shoots them in the head one by one with a revolver, but once he’s out of bullets he just rests the gun on the last guy’s shoulder and asks him to hold this for him, he then grabs a hammer instead of another bullet and smashes his head with it. I also love the moment where Lieutenant Wayhu is trying to get away with him, and Tama tells him that their boss sent him here to die. When Wayhu turns his head to look at him, Tama gets one big Cheshire cat smile on his face like he just saw the old guy wet himself. I really love this guy, I hope he pops up in something stateside in the near future because he really made me smile.
• Tegar Satrya’s Bowo is pretty much a hothead in all senses of the word. We’re first introduced to him giving Rama crap for asking about Sergeant Jaka’s plan, and then we later see him killing a dude with the ax and screaming angrily while doing so, this is before we saw him get shot by Tama’s thugs, and after being shot, we later saw him repeatedly stabbing a separate thug. In an exchange taking place between the two scenes, Rama tells Bowo he’s gonna take him to the guy they met outside, Bowo then threatens to haunt Rama for the rest of his life if that dude cuts him. At the same time, you can definitely infer that he cares about the guy because when he sees a machete cut through Rama’s cheek while they’re hiding in the tenant’s wall, his face is filled with horror. And it’s not the kind of horror you have when you think you’re about to get busted, it’s the kind of horror you have when you see your friend is in danger.
• Joe Taslim’s Sergeant Jaka is pretty much a paint by numbers hard top cop who cares. He doesn’t want any civilian dead, he just wants to get the bad guys. He gives his boys a hard time, but at the end of the time he wants them all back on the bus by the time they get done here because he doesn’t want to be walking up to any doorsteps telling tearful spouses that their husband didn’t make it. He’s got a decent sense of humor, such as the moment where he asks if Bowo was done yelling at Rama so he could finish going over the plan. He’s a good presence and I liked seeing him around.
• Donny Alamsyah’s Andi serves as basically a thief with a heart of gold, he feels more at home among criminals but at the end of the day he doesn’t want to see good men die. He also clearly cares about his brother considering that he put his head on the line for the guy. He knows full well what Tama and Mad Dog are capable of doing to him if he gets caught, but he helps his brother anyway. I guess loyalty is a family trait.
• I really liked the apartment tenant, Gofar, the guy who Rama and the team meat outside the complex before they storm in. He comes off like an honest guy who normally would advise against trusting the police, but has a genuine change of heart after being treated so fairly by Rama. And I really like how it’s shown that this guy is genuinely putting the life of himself AND his wife trying to protect this guy and his loudmouthed friend.
• I really like the comedy in this movie, there’s not a whole lot of it, but there’s just enough peppered throughout to make you crack a smile between holding your breath during the intense beat downs. I already mentioned the execution from near the beginning of the movie, but another bit I liked was the scene where Rama and another guy fall a couple floors through a window while fighting and eventually landing on a fire escape, Rama finally beats the guy he fell with then slips in through another tenant’s window walking past a man and his wife/girlfriend, the latter of whom asks “Where’d he come from?” I especially love the scene where the machete gang has left Gofar’s apartment and Rama sets Bowo on his couch, then asks Gofar to grab a knife to help get the bullet out of Bowo’s leg, and all Gofar can find is one of these
  
  Bowo then looks at the knife in horror, grabs Gofar by the collar, and tells him to look again, before groaning in pain and telling Rama to just go ahead and get it over with. If you’re one of those people who firmly believes that the best source of all comedy is misery, then you will love this scene!
• For some reason I really dug this scene when things first hits the fan, there’s this one guy who’s got his hands cuffed behind his back, and while the two cops looking after him are distracted, he slips his arms over his legs putting his hands in front of his chest instead of behind his back, then slides a machete out he’d had hidden under the table, and then cuts the two officers who were holding him captive. I’m not sure why I liked it, I thought it was just really clever.
• I really liked some of the minor details here. There’s this quick scene in an elevator where Andi cuts one dude’s throat, and then stabs another guy through the neck, the guy struggles for a second before dying and Andi has to actually push the knife against his neck until he actually dies, causing the tip of the blade to actually scrape against the wall of the elevator. Another bit I liked was the scene was Bowo actually gets shot in the ear, and suddenly the sound becomes just this annoying ring, implying that Bowo just lost his hearing for a few minutes.
• If there’s one trope I’m an absolute sucker for, it’s when a character says something near the end or in the middle of a movie, and another character or the same character references it. And this movie was no exception. There’s a quick scene where Andi offers to give Rama a change of clothes so he can get out of the building undetected. Rama sighs and says “No, this fits me just fine.” The scene was basically Rama saying “I can’t leave without the rest of my crew or completing my mission.” Andi sighs in resignation and then let’s his brother leave. At the end of the film, when Rama and Bowo are leaving with Wayhu in toe, Rama asks his brother why he chose a life of crime, Andi smirks and replies “The same reason you stay in that uniform, it just fits.” I really like the exchange, and how it shows that while neither brother doesn't particularly care for the other’s choice, they still love and respect each other, and do ultimately understand each other.
• I really like the scene where Lieutenant Wayhu attempts suicide, it’s pretty clear he’s given up on accomplishing anything on either side of the law given that at this point, both sides want him dead. And I love his reaction when the revolver he’s using is out of bullets.
• Mike Shinoda’s score is terrific! There’s a lot of Linkin Park there, but it’s really great, and I especially love the final track they played at the end. Although I did honestly expect to start hearing Chester’s voice.

CONS

• Pierre Gruno’s Lieutenant Wayhu has a very really unclear motivation. It’s never really made clear why he’s working with Tama, who they’re both working for, or what was so important that it had to involve putting the lives of 20 honest cops in jeopardy
• I really don’t get Yayan Ruhian’s Mad Dog. I get that he prefers to just beat the crap out of people, but honestly, I don’t care what you’re if you have a fetish for another dude putting his hands on you, you’re paid to kill so just shoot the guys before he can get you.
• At the start of the movie there’s two major cut aways that just really pissed me off. One was during Tama’s introduction, where he gets the hammer out and is about to connect with the guy’s head when it just cuts back to the buss. And the other was when the cuffed crook grabs his machete strikes at the two officers holding him captive. This was a pretty violent movie overall, so it really just annoyed me that they cut away from that specific instance of gore.

Overall, I’m inclined to say that this movie is A.
An absolute great time! And B. Not as good as everyone claims it is. I enjoy a good brainless action picture, but what bugs me about this movie is it also tries to be a genuine crime thriller/police procedural, and it only gets about halfway there. It’s sort of like that track star who’s about when he starts chatting up some random broad, you know they beat the competition by a mile, but it’s really annoying that just sort drop the ball briefly. All in all, I’m gonna give The Raid: Redemption, a 7.8 out of 10.

I’ll also say, having watching The Raid 2, or The Raid: Berandal, I actually think it’s a lot better on the grounds of more interesting characters, more inventive and exciting fights, and a generally better character arc and plot line. This movie is now slouch, but I’ve seen better and I’m not gonna pretend this is top of the line just because the action is so amazing. In any case, I really do like this movie, and I really do look forward to comparing and contrasting it with Dredd. So with that being said

It’s time gentlemen.