I recently watched the director\u2019s disappointing latest effort, so I thought I\u2019d go back and look at what made The Raid one of my all-time favourite action films.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Show, Don\u2019t Tell<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Havoc kicks off with a long expository \u2018tough guy\u2019 monologue from the main character. If you\u2019ve been following my blog in any capacity, then you probably know that I\u2019m 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\u2019ve been assigned to do as they approach the apartment block. But that\u2019s different. You\u2019re not getting any backstory from main character Rama. You\u2019re just getting a basic description.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d 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\u2019t 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\u2019t properly see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u2019s fine. We don\u2019t need any tagged-on monologue about how lonely the guy is feeling with his chosen lifestyle or how he can\u2019t even get a couple of unicorn toys to his estranged daughter because his work life\u2019s so hectic. I don\u2019t care. Just get into the action, goshdarnit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fists, Not Guns<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m 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\u2019s something to be said for The Joker\u2019s 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\u2019t possible with a bullet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That gun stuff makes sense. Havoc spends most of the action scenes with the weapons in play, and it just doesn\u2019t have the same impact as the use of bodily weapons. This is also partly a technical preference for me. If you\u2019ve got a lot of gun action going on, that means more edits. That means more moments where you\u2019re taken out of the action and have to watch mindless imagery of people getting shot to shreds. There\u2019s just not as much emotional impact. Havoc still has the signature Gareth Evans bone-crunching violence schtick, but it\u2019s not as powerful with weapons that can get cheap kills from afar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s what made The Raid so brutal and effective. Uwais and Yayan Ruhian\u2019s genius fight choreography introduced the Indonesian martial art of pencack silat to Western audiences, and goshdarn is it effective. That\u2019s not to say that guns aren\u2019t involved in the action, because they certainly are (Airsoft replicas were used to avoid the cost of real firearms), but the film\u2019s most nail biting and powerful scenes are the ones where characters go against each other with nothing but the power of their bodies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You Don\u2019t Need a Big Western Star <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I mean, maybe you do, in a box office sense? Havoc will probably do well financially, considering Tom Hardy\u2019s face dominating the movie poster. And that\u2019s 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\u2019s good to give support to actors who aren\u2019t from a more Hollywood-centric mould. Hopefully Evans will swerve back to more Indonesian-based action choreography in his next flick, but we\u2019ll have to wait and see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently watched the director\u2019s disappointing latest effort, so I thought I\u2019d go back and look at what made The Raid one of my all-time favourite action films.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1730,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions\/1730"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nancyepton.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}