The Raid

Have you ever seen The Simpsons bit about The Fireworks Factory? 

Basically everyone on a field trip is forced to slog through the most boring factories in the world while one of the kids laments, “When are we going to get to the fireworks factory?”

Movie lovers, this whole damn flick is the fireworks factory. 

The set up (a large SWAT team is ambushed in a building full of criminals out to kill them) has just enough story to let you enjoy the action scenes and care about the handful of characters you are supposed to care about. It does this quickly and with a sharpshooter’s precision. 

Within, 10 minutes or so, everyone is introduced and the stakes are explained. And then BOOM.  

Boom, boom, boom. 

Director and writer Garett Evans sets the movie in one building and the tight script allows us focus on the things that matter (insane action scenes) without blowing the budget.

While most of this is ridiculous it’s the best kind of movie ridiculous. This is a movie that leaves realism back at the station. But you won’t stop and think about how all this is implausible because your adrenaline will be pumping and you will be gripping your chair. 

One example of ridiculous. A bad guy with a gun does a stand off with a good guy with a knife. The bad guy doesn’t pull the trigger. Instead, he brings him at gunpoint into a room and puts the gun down and gives a speech about how he prefers to kill with his bare hands. 

Real life don’t work the way. But in a great movie, that bit of business not only works but it feels like everyone involved just called their shot.

The fight, as you might imagine, is glorious and brutal. 

Anyway, I felt about this the way I felt when I discovered John Woo’s The Killers and Hard Boiled. Which is, I want to watch everything else this guy made and I can’t believe action cinema can be this good.