The Raid: Redemption - Review

The Raid: Redemption is an Indonesian action film which follows a group of SWAT members on a building raid where a powerful and seemingly untouchable gang leader and his thugs trap them inside.


First of all I want to give a shout out to Eric over at Pretty Much It for recommending this movie. I watched his review of this one back in March after he, of course, saw it at Sundance and I was intrigued enough that I added it to my Netflix queue and waited for it to become available. Thank you, Eric. This was by far one of the most enjoyable movies I have seen all year.

Now with that said, I would also recommend this one. It is an action and martial arts type film but it is really well played out. The visuals are great and I thought as far as violence and gore went it was within the realm of reality and quite graphic. Now of course if you aren't into action films with a lot of fighting then you might not like it, but trust me... it is a thousand times better than The Expendables or whatever action movies we have received in the United States the past couple of years. I normally am not big into action movies and I enjoyed the hell out of The Raid: Redemption.

As far as story and all that goes it is basic. It focuses on one main SWAT member named Rama and basically follows him as the team continually gets picked off one by one and they try to escape the building alive. There is a subplot that is introduced later into the movie but I won't spoil it for anyone.
And in case you haven't gathered already, it does have subtitles. It is an Indonesian film with Indonesian actors and they speak their native language. If you aren't into reading subtitles then that is another thing to think about. However, the DVD copy I got from Netflix had an English dubbed audio track so you could always switch. Subtitles usually don't bother me so I kept the original dialogue audio, but there also isn't a whole lot of dialogue due to the fighting and action. I wouldn't worry about it.

Overall this is a great action flick. I highly recommend checking it out and from what I gather they are working on a sequel so I'll definitely be keeping my eye out for that. Bravo.