I recently watched the director’s disappointing latest effort, so I thought I’d go back and look at what made The Raid one of my all-time favourite action films.
Show, Don’t Tell
Havoc kicks off with a long expository ‘tough guy’ monologue from the main character. If you’ve been following my blog in any capacity, then you probably know that I’m not a fan of that descriptive shit. The imagery and use of sound should speak for itself. Sure, you could argue that The Raid does something similar in its opening scene as Sergeant Jaka tells all his crew what they’ve been assigned to do as they approach the apartment block. But that’s different. You’re not getting any backstory from main character Rama. You’re just getting a basic description.
I’d compare it to the opening speech in Drive; The Driver lets the people on the other side of the phone know what he does, but he doesn’t waste a single second explaining who he is. The audience are merely given a taste of what to come. The rest of the intrigue is created by the figure that you don’t properly see.
We know from the basic plot that the film is about a jaded cop who unleashes his special talents upon a drug gang when things go south. And that’s fine. We don’t need any tagged-on monologue about how lonely the guy is feeling with his chosen lifestyle or how he can’t even get a couple of unicorn toys to his estranged daughter because his work life’s so hectic. I don’t care. Just get into the action, goshdarnit.
Fists, Not Guns
I’m not wearing a load of grunge-y make-up, nor do I have greasy curly hair on my head (no hair to speak of in that department, hooray) or particularly psychopathic tendencies, but there’s something to be said for The Joker’s brief speech in The Dark Knight. Locked in the confines of prison, he informs the guard about why he goes for knives instead of guns when it comes to dispatching his victims. He reasons that guns are too quick, and that knives allow you to get the little moments that aren’t possible with a bullet.
That gun stuff makes sense. Havoc spends most of the action scenes with the weapons in play, and it just doesn’t have the same impact as the use of bodily weapons. This is also partly a technical preference for me. If you’ve got a lot of gun action going on, that means more edits. That means more moments where you’re taken out of the action and have to watch mindless imagery of people getting shot to shreds. There’s just not as much emotional impact. Havoc still has the signature Gareth Evans bone-crunching violence schtick, but it’s not as powerful with weapons that can get cheap kills from afar.
That’s what made The Raid so brutal and effective. Uwais and Yayan Ruhian’s genius fight choreography introduced the Indonesian martial art of pencack silat to Western audiences, and goshdarn is it effective. That’s not to say that guns aren’t involved in the action, because they certainly are (Airsoft replicas were used to avoid the cost of real firearms), but the film’s most nail biting and powerful scenes are the ones where characters go against each other with nothing but the power of their bodies.
You Don’t Need a Big Western Star
I mean, maybe you do, in a box office sense? Havoc will probably do well financially, considering Tom Hardy’s face dominating the movie poster. And that’s good from the point of view of supporting more film projects in the future. But The Raid still created an ample cult following from Western audiences despite Iko Uwais being an unknown in that particular sphere of the world. And it’s good to give support to actors who aren’t from a more Hollywood-centric mould. Hopefully Evans will swerve back to more Indonesian-based action choreography in his next flick, but we’ll have to wait and see.