Review: The Raid (15)

Big budgets and studio clout aside I seriously doubt the original can be bettered for its sheer ferocity, energy and body count. It also introduces a performer with genuine star quality in Iko Uwais, playing a young SWAT trooper at the heart of an operation that goes horribly wrong.

Rama (Uwais) is part of an unauthorised raid on a concrete tenement “hotel” for villains in a Jakarta slum – seven floors of killers all looking to pop a cop. The SWAT squad is quickly whittled down to just a handful, spread over several floors, and all at the mercy of an army of seemingly unstoppable thugs, bandits and psychos. Like rats in a trap, they seek an escape.

Reminiscent of Bruce Lee’s final opus Game of Death,The Raid pitches its heroes against a formidable army of foes.

Fans of the genre will see hints of John Woo’s early work. But Evans never lets the momentum slip. Thus Uwais and his cohorts are constantly bombarded with more and more adversaries until, inevitably, they are faced with Mr Big himself and his two attack dogs. The Raid moves at a lightning pace barely conceivable to the naked eye. An hour passes in a flash. The film’s only drawback is that there is rather too much of the same in the second half, and the constant sound of gunfire, screams and snapping limbs begins to wear one down.