The Raid
Unlikely pairings can be perfect. Indonesian film The Raid centres around a police bust in a large tower block filled with criminals, guns, and machetes; unlikely fare from a Welsh director (Evans). Though its opening action sequences are dangerously close to Zack Snyder’s brand of super-slo-mo gun porn, as the regression of weaponry continues from bullets to blades, each impersonal gunshot becomes as intimate as a knife wound. Once this seemingly endless array of arsenal is finally depleted, then the fun really begins.
Ostensibly SWAT training in Jakarta must include a course in silat, the Indonesian martial art, or perhaps these bobbies just got lucky when they hired some of their team's deadliest practitioners. For the sake of balance the criminals have a few strong combatants of their own. One in particular, known as Mad Dog(Yayan Ruhian), is like a pint-sized Goro from Mortal Kombat, but deadlier and with fewer arms. A surreal, gritty, ultra-violent treat sure to have kung fu movie fans salivating and high kicking in the aisles. [David McGinty]