Review: The Raid: Redemption

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The Raid: RedemptionEvery year there are films that receive a lot of hype. Sometimes these films live up to the hype and and sometimes they disappoint. I recently saw one of these highly hyped films, The Raid: Redemption, and let me say it right now this movie lives up every bit of the hype.

The Raid: Redemption received a great deal of attention at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, and word quickly spread that this was a must-see film. A lot of us hoped that that The Raid: Redemption would be a last minute addition to Fantastic Fest 2011. But luck did not shine on our screens as Gareth Evans's Indonesian action film was unavailable from the studio. This simply added to its mystery. A lucky 1,200 filmgoers did get to see the movie at the Paramount during SXSW this year, spreading still more good buzz.

The Raid: Redemption tells a story of a police raid gone wrong. A small team of Indonesian police officers descends on a drug lord's compound -- a high-rise, low-rent apartment complex with the head honchos at the very top. This small team quickly finds itself overrun and outgunned by the drug lord's hired army of thugs.

This film is an excellent mashup of themes developed in some of my favorite genre films. We have a group of police officers outgunned and trapped, a la Assault on Precinct 13. We have a high-rise slum used as a drug lord's castle, a la New Jack City. And finally we have shootouts and kung-fu battles, a la Shoot em Up and Fists of Fury. This movie seeps action from every pore.

This movie works on numerous levels. The cinematography immerses the viewer into the cold dinginess the tenants occupy. Life under the control of drug-dealing thugs is not pleasurable and The Raid: Redemption shows that. The choice of color palette highlights this cold dinginess.

While the cinematography works well, one of the real assets of this film is the score and sound design. You feel the ringing in your ears when an explosion goes off, you hear the discharge of spent cartridges from automatic weapons and you feel the blades swing through the air. And this is just the sound design. Accompanying the sound design is a killer score created by Mike Shinoda of the nu-metal/rap-rock hybrid band Linkin Park. When you find yourself humming a movie’s music as you walk to the car you know it worked. This movie's soundtrack was hum-worthy. 

Austin is a town of genre film lovers. We have a festival dedicated to the art of genre: Fantastic Fest. We make films like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Machete. We also have our own film archive: The American Genre Film Archive. And tomorrow in theaters, we will have a great film to view called The Raid

The red-band trailer is embedded below.