"Pulling a trigger is like ordering takeout." Mad Dog
☆☆☆☆☆ Classic
Serbuad Maut - Raid: The Redemption (2011) is a horror film that is unrelenting in its one pursuit; Trauma.
Directed and written by Gareth Evans.
Starring Iko Uwais, Donny Alamsyah, Ray Sahetapy among others.
Raid is an Indonesian film that is directed and written by a Welshman.
It's budget was a modest $1.1 million and shot on location In Jakarta, Indonesia. What Gareth and his production team do with such a modest budget for an action film is utterly jaw dropping. Originally they planned to make a much larger budgeted prison film called "Berandal", but they were not able to raise the necessary funds. Instead Evan rewrote and changed the setting of Berandal and called it Serbuad Maut which takes place in a rundown apartment building in Jakarta. Sony Picture Classics acquired the US distribution rights after Raid was screened at The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Sony then acquired the sequel rights to Raid 2: Berandal, which is in post production and scheduled for a September 8, 2013 release in Indonesia.
I found myself on the edge of my seat throughout the film, as though I was watching a horror film. It wasn't until I discovered that Gareth has said, that he did Raid: The Redemption as a horror film. Makes sense because the action sequences are strung together one after the other for 90 minutes and they are as relentless, bloody and gruesome as any horror flick. At the end of the film I felt bruised, bloodied and beaten black and blue, like its characters. Gareth upends the traditional action movie by making Raid into a horror film in the way Darren Aronofsky turns Black Swan (2010) from a drama into a horror film. Gareth and Darren have upended the traditional genres of action and drama by adding a horror element to unsettle the audience.
Gareth succeeds, because he uses a wide angle lens for all the action sequences which allows the audience to marvel at the action. The editing kept the pace of the film fast, but then slowed down enough briefly to give the audience time to empathize with the characters plight. The scene below demonstrates Evans successful use of editing to slow the action pace for the audience. Note the impending horror film trauma and tension that is coming towards them. This is not your usual action film editing and its why it succeeds masterfully at drawing the audience's empathy. We as audience members can relate to their horror throughout the film.
Trivia - All the guns firing in the film are replicas. The muzzle flashes, casing ejections were added digitally.
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