“I'm still thinking about The Raid,”
said Gareth Evans (not the director, but a friend with exactly the
same name), a week later. I realized then that the film remained
with me as well, but I wasn't exactly thinking about it. Just as one
doesn't really think about internal bleeding. I still felt The Raid.
It resonated with the pitch of being beaten with several bags of
cement.
Gareth saw the film again: “It's even
better the second time because you go in knowing that there's no real
storyline to worry about.” Sure there is, there's a crime boss,
the hero's pregnant wife, the obligatory
brother-mixed-up-with-the-wrong-crowd sub-plot, and, uh...
Okay so there's basically just those
things. And yet the Curzon eagerly slapped it onto its film
programme. In terms of meeting the criteria for entry into
indie/art-house cinemas I guess it's grainy-looking and in
another language, but that is the end of its rather thin artistic crust. The rest is
icing, a sugar rush for any 20-year-old male in search of the
Valhalla of ass-kicking. It's a martial arts film that is mostly the
martial part, all very purpose-driven and militaristic. There's no
flouncy dancing around one another. We cut to the intimate parts.
Horns lock quickly and bodies are broken vividly and thuggishly.
So credit where credit is due: this
film has serious force. And in the last decade, martial arts movies
had looked to be waning in popularity, consigned to flashy costume
dramas, or overly polished gangster dramas with too many tacky suits
and metal briefcases and members-only clubs with the name “Dragon”
in the title. The Raid's answer to this: crime-lord sure, but no drugs,
no money, and no pretty surroundings. The setting is almost macabre
in its slumminess. It's a gritty, beastial, and claustrophobic
survival show. You can feel the character's desperation, locked in
with the savage bottom-rung of society and having to fight their way
out of hell.
And we're in Indonesia. This is unknown territory, shimmering with ruthless uncertainty. There
are no movie stars and probably very little in the way of employee
protection. Basically anyone can die at any minute and everyone is
probably actually getting hit – if they want the job that is. (When
the credits rolled I looked for multiple extras playing one part,
imagining scenes with take after take where at one point the guy just didn't get up
so they called in another unlucky soul to put his internal organs on
the line for the most realistic-looking
head-being-destroyed-from-smashing-scene possible).
For such a seemingly lo-fi endeavour,
The Raid no doubt beats to the rhythm of video game culture. The
first act is all guns and explosives, used more
generously than most war films. In some way this lends torque to its
many melee scenes to follow, channelling those primal video game
feelings of terror you get when your bullets run out.
Tarantino will undoubtedly endorse the
film as he does with all things that are so brutal they are silly and
probably sidle over to its inevitable sequels, stamping it with a
good ol' “Tarantino Presents” marquee. But this seems like
something that will be crushed by whatever money and publicity lands
on it. Although it will no doubt inspire martial arts films to come,
it in itself might be a one-off. Its thrills are organic. Our sense of the film-maker's conceits are temporarily suspended. But as with so many sequels, its duplication can give us diminishing returns, seeming transparent in attempting to continually pound us with The Raid Thing. How
much can you build on this? Grainier cinematography? More elaborate and glorious displays of pain? Will we become numb, or, as with all good video games, is this viscerally pleasurable enough to have replay value? After all,
those Youtube montages of people falling down never seem to get old.
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