Refreshingly unpretentious and incredibly well-choreographed. It's nice to see an action movie embrace its video game roots instead of trying (and failing) to rise above it.

Review: http://www.worldofkj.com/article.php?i=673

As far as action for the sake of action goes, the choreography is extremely physically impressive and the spatial awareness of the camera is a real treat. The movie also maintains a super fast pace due to the somewhat thin story. While each individual action beat is brutal and awesome, some scenes could be shuffled and the rough total effect wouldn't be dramatically different due to a conscious choice to put great action scenes in front of attempts at subplots or nuanced characters. I can see how some could therefore find The Raid a bit tiring or even numbing, but the fantastic gun fights, fist fights, and machete fights galore prove The Raid is a veritable feast of ass-kicking.

B

It's definitely one of the better straight action flicks I've seen in a long time. The plot is obviously standard, but they clearly didn't waste too much time setting it up. It's just insane about five minutes in.

I really enjoyed how they made Mad Dog so ridiculous. He just knows he's a monster when he unties Andi, takes on both of them and mostly dominates.

Mad Dog was definitely my favorite character. The scene where he uses a gun to get Taka into a room just so he can take it apart and give a speech about why he prefers using his fists before their EPIC fight is just action movie gold.

The Raid: Redemption

Well it's certainly entertaining, and the fights are pretty great to watch. It's far from a perfect film, though, and regardless of how much I liked the fight scenes and action, those two elements alone do not make a masterpiece (I felt the use of music and slo-mo could have improved the movie). It is solely a film about fighting, though. Fighting can get repetitive after a while, but not once did it seem like that in this film. There is a nice mix of gun fights, machete fights, and hand-to-hand combat. People die in a myriad of ways, and it's very bloody. I liked the pacing, it's a lean fighting extravaganza from the word 'go'.

After seeing this, I'm going to have to downgrade Dredd 3D. It's pretty much the same story, and The Raid was made first. There's a US remake of The Raid planned, and while it's employing the same choreographers and has enlisted Gareth Evans as executive producer, one can't help think that it will be shit compared to this. If there's any film related to The Raid that I'm looking forward to, it's Berandal, the Indonesian sequel.

B+

Dredd went into production before The Raid. Any similarity is pure coincidence.

Oh ok. I've lowered Dredd 3D from a "B+" to a "B" anyway. Out of the two tower block heist movies I have seen, The Raid is the better one. I'm not accusing it of theft, because they are totally different, but what The Raid accomplished with such a miniscule budget, Dredd 3D didn't capture even half of the atmosphere, so I don't think it's as deserving of a "B+" as I did before.

I've voted for The Raid in the WOKJ awards for Best Foreign Film.

I prefer Dredd myself. It is not as nonstop kinetic, but it has a great, early John Carpenter type feel. An old-school urban-siege movie.