The Raid: Redemption, 2012. This is not a great film. The characters are mere sketches at best (Iko Uwais's Rama is introduced quietly completing his morning prayers, then kissing his pregnant wife goodbye, then speaking to his father before strapping on a pistol and badge. In a fast brush stroke his is set as The Hero. That is as in depth as it gets) and the set up perfunctory (he is a rookie in a well armed police team raiding a drug dealer's stronghold in Jakarta. It goes pear-shaped and he has to fight his way up and then back out). It is more like an old-school video game than a film.
But as a martial arts *movie*? It is amazing. It is a running, incredibly choreographed fight scene in the way that *Fury Road* is a running car chase. There are a couple fighting styles in the move, but the main characters are all practitioners of pencak silat, which is perfect for this: close combat, improvised and brutal. Silat make Krav Maga look like wushu. And as good as he is, Iko Uwais isn't even the best fighter in the film. That would be Yayan Ruhian, who is evil but so freaking genial about it you come to like him. At one point he gets the drop on one of the cops using a hand gun. Gesturing the man into an apartment, he unloads the gun, explaining he never liked to use them as there was no real rush. "It is like ordering take out." Smiling, he lets the cop take the first punch. "This is what I do," he says, before taking beating the cop to death with his hands, feet, knees, forearms, body, and anything else at hand. At 5'2 and lean, Ruhian is a human blur even as he is towered over by the other actors. If you ever wanted to know what Cassie Suthorn looked like in a fight, Yayan Ruhian is it.
The fights are amazing, and they don't look like a martial arts demonstration, they look like people trying their best not to get killed. The stunts are fantastic, the kind you can't get away with in the us anymore without resorting to CGI. There is a gag where a guy hits back-first on a stairway banister that I still don't know how he lived. The whole movie is that visceral.
Not a great film, but an amazing movie.
