Here’s the thing: sometimes even wordy motherfuckers like me don’t have a lot to say about a movie they watched. I know. It’s weird. “But Carlie, you love the sound of your own voice.” And quite surely, I do. But still, not every movie demands one of my epic reviews, or even one of my slightly less epic reviews, even if I did like the movie in question. So today you will be getting your very first Baby Review — oh, okay, I’m really just listing it as a Random Recommendation — as I talk, very briefly, about . . .
The Raid: Redemption is an Indonesian martial arts action film that I saw a trailer for last year and have heard pretty good things about since. My sister and I decided to give it a try last night, and I must say, it’s pretty damn awesome. If you like martial arts films and haven’t watched this yet, you really should give it a shot.
Unfortunately, as I didn’t find a lot of fault with it — and as the plot isn’t terribly complex — I don’t have much to say except what I’ve already said: it’s awesome. I can say that I think it’s one of the more fun action movies I’ve seen in a while. The fight scenes are great, and there’s a lot of tension in them. I kind of wanted to go kick someone’s ass afterwards, and that’s usually a good sign.
The basic plot is this: a squad of super cops sneak into a big ass apartment building to take down the evil drug lord who runs the joint, but the drug lord finds out and traps the cops in the building with no reinforcements and a lot of pissed off tenants looking to hunt them down. Not sure if that’s your thing? Watch this red-band trailer . . .
. . . and if that type of violence seems to be your particular brand of tea, then this might be a good movie to check out on Netflix, because I think I’d give it an A-, and as I’m somewhat stingy with A’s on a first viewing, I should think that’s saying something.
My Geek Blasphemy 
You had me at “Indonesian martial arts action film.”
I was actually rather disappointed by “The Raid”. I was expecting it to be more inventive, like “Ong Bak” or “Chocolate”, so when instead we mostly had hundreds of expendable bad guys who we knew full well didn’t have a chance against the bland protagonist I found myself feeling rather bored.
I’m not even sure what you mean when you say the action scenes were “tense”. When one of the major bad guys and a major good guy both decide that they are going to fight without weapons, I just found it annoying. The best scene in the whole film was pretty early on and didn’t involve any fighting at all (i.e. where they are hiding in the wall).
SPOILERS
Well, sorta spoilers. Anyway, I wouldn’t have minded some characters who weren’t so expendable — although I don’t care about the bad guys. Here I’m talking about the cops. But I realized pretty quickly this movie was pretty much going to be centered entirely on Rama and his brother, and that didn’t really bother me so much. I thought the movie delivered what it promised. (Of course, if it HAD to be remade . . . maybe I’d give a few of the cops a little more character. But I don’t think a remake is necessary, even though it’s probably inevitable.)
Is this the same movie http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-most-baffling-subtitles-in-foreign-action-movie-history/
Same movie, yes. Same subtitles, no. Although it’s kind of fun to look at the crazy subtitles and realize what they’re supposed to say.