Gareth Evans
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Gareth Evans’ Indonesian martial-arts throwback The Raid: Redemption has a look and feel that resembles the best of ’80s cult action movies: half John Carpenter , half John Woo.
The Godfather (1972)
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
influenced The Raid 2 (2014)
Plot Themes Characters
I know it sounds like fault-finding or nit-picking to note the borrowed-bits plot here; one sequence echoes, strongly, the five families wipeout from “The Godfather,” while there are also nods to “Game of Death” and a general air of John Woo-esque loyalty-vs-law themes.
If you're looking for a crime epic in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather or Kinji Fukasaku's Battles Without Honour or Humanity , you might find it a fairly unoriginal exercise.
Whereas the first film had all the lean, mean efficiency of the original Die Hard, the new film cribs from every major gangster film of the last forty years, creating an unwieldy two and a half hour amalgamation of The Godfather, The Departed and Eastern Promises.
As the stakes rise he comes off like Fredo from The Godfather, if Fredo were a complete sociopath.
A hotchpotch of Infernal Affairs and The Godfather , it may not be narratively original, but it’s bolstered by a host of dramatic performances that grip as easily as the action.
What hurts The Raid 2 is not so much this sort of by-the-numbers plotting – The Raid was similarly slight on story – but its pretensions towards being some sort of The Godfather-with-roundhouse-kicks crime epic.
An ill-advised use of Handel's stately "Sarabande" will either bring to mind Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon or trigger unintentional laughs at the unearned somberness.
And there are art cinema gestures, like the scene scored to Handel's Sarabande in D Minor, better-known as the main theme from Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon.
Apart from the brief use of the “Sarabande” from Handel’s “Suite in D minor,” which may jerk your thoughts toward “Barry Lyndon” (or not), the soundtrack is essentially a wall of percussion that mirrors the pummeling, metronomic rhythms of the action.
Shot with a sleek geometry, the father-son business dynamic is regarded as if it had the gravity of Barry Lyndon; a particularly treacherous assassination sequence even quotes that movie’s use of Handel’s “Sarabande.”
The score by Joseph Trapanese, Aria Prayogi and Fajar Yuskemal is so propulsive that when one scene is suddenly accompanied by the Handel sarabande familiar from “Barry Lyndon,” the effect is almost giddily amusing.
Quentin Tarantino’s two Kill Bills are clearly referenced/homaged, as are the original Oldboy, the movies of Sam Peckinpah, the Infernal Affairs films (which served as the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed) and the earlier Hong Kong thrillers made by John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam (particularly the A Better Tomorrow movie trilogy).
(You may be reminded of “The Departed” and its Hong Kong inspiration, “Infernal Affairs.”)
In a plot vaguely reminiscent of “The Departed” and “Infernal Affairs,” the Hong Kong crime drama on which it was based, Rama goes undercover as Yuda inside a Jakarta crime family, where he encounters Japanese Yakuza and corrupt members of the Jakarta police.
If this sounds like the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs (Americanized by Martin Scorsese as The Departed ), well, who's complaining?
It’s apparent that Berandal takes too many cues from Infernal Affairs and Martin Scorsese’s remake The Departed.
So of course he says no! Because when some guy you’ve never met before shows up with a mustache and tries to pitch you the same “you-won’t-paid-like-a-regallah-coughp” idea Martin Sheen talked Leonardo DiCaprio into in The Departed, you say no.
Infernal Affairs (2002)
Directed by Alan Mak Siu-Fai
influenced The Raid 2 (2014), The Raid (2012)
Plot
Keeping in mind the delicious ways in which Martin Scorsese expanded upon Infernal Affairs for The Departed , it would be interesting to see what he could do with The Raid: Redemption, although there are plenty of other directors whose visions might be as enticing (including Evans).
Quentin Tarantino’s two Kill Bills are clearly referenced/homaged, as are the original Oldboy, the movies of Sam Peckinpah, the Infernal Affairs films (which served as the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed) and the earlier Hong Kong thrillers made by John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam (particularly the A Better Tomorrow movie trilogy).
In a plot vaguely reminiscent of “The Departed” and “Infernal Affairs,” the Hong Kong crime drama on which it was based, Rama goes undercover as Yuda inside a Jakarta crime family, where he encounters Japanese Yakuza and corrupt members of the Jakarta police.
What plot that follows is a series of reveals and reversals that borrow liberally from Hong Kong action films (Infernal Affairs, in particular), but really, all that is secondary to the film’s endlessly inventive action set-pieces, which are kinetically shot and meticulously paced like mini three-act operas.
Self-congratulatory types may observe The Raid 2: Berandal in terms of its smorgasbord of cinematic influences, and pat themselves on the back for catching its touchstones: the A Better Tomorrow and Infernal Affairs trilogies, the filmography of Johnnie To, The Godfather: Part II, maybe even a little The Untouchables.
If this sounds like the Hong Kong classic Infernal Affairs (Americanized by Martin Scorsese as The Departed ), well, who's complaining?
Quentin Tarantino’s two Kill Bills are clearly referenced/homaged, as are the original Oldboy, the movies of Sam Peckinpah, the Infernal Affairs films (which served as the inspiration for Martin Scorsese’s The Departed) and the earlier Hong Kong thrillers made by John Woo, Tsui Hark and Ringo Lam (particularly the A Better Tomorrow movie trilogy).
Each geyser of blood gets its own glamor-lighting, lending the depravity a balletic opulence that insinuates that Evans really just wanted to create a splatter-house adaptation of "Miami Vice" or John Woo's "A Better Tomorrow" series.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Evans has mentioned that films that inspired him include the 1968 Vincent Price movie Witchfinder General , the notorious 1971 Ken Russell film The Devils , and of course the 1973 cult classic (pun kind of intended) The Wicker Man (the original, though we imagine Evans finds some value in the insane Nicolas Cage remake as well).
Its complexities become more fussy than fun, as the men of Erisden each fight for control (and compete for the “act most like Oliver Reed in The Devils Award”).
But Evans adds in British folk-horror like 1968’s Witchfinder General and Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 film The Devils, as well as contemporary takes on the genre, like Ben Wheatley’s Kill List.
John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum (2019)
Directed by Chad Stahelski
influenced by The Raid 2 (2014), The Raid (2012)
Visuals
For action fans, this film deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as “The Raid” and “The Raid 2.” “Parabellum” is the best thing to come out of the genre since Gareth Evans showed the world how to make a great action movie.
Reeves remains a formidable physical presence when engaged in combat, and he’s matched by Berry’s own ferocity along with Mark Dacascos and excellent uses of Yayan Ruhian (Mad Dog from “The Raid“) and Cecep Arif Rahman (“The Raid 2“), who are easily some of the most dynamic fighters on film in recent years.
Riffing on modern Asian action cinema more than ever before (look out for some cool nods to The Villainess and The Raid 2 ), Chapter 3 looks absolutely incredible – the lighting and set design, in particular, are both on point – while the director and stunt crew use everything at their disposal in the pursuit of bruising, boundary-pushing dust-ups: horses, antique knives and even library books (eat your heart out, Jason Bourne) are all employed by Wick in his relentlessly bloody rampage.
The Raid 2 and The Force Awakens ’ Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman show up as a sword-wielding duo, and Mark Dacascos, a star of innumerable straight-to-video action movies who’s still best-known as the Chairman on Iron Chef America , walks a nimble line as a ruthless killer who’s also a gushing superfan.
Toss in a return from the Bowery King (Laurence Fishburne, Event Horizon ) and the introduction of two badasses played by The Raid 2 ‘s Cecep Arif Rahman and Yayan Ruhian, and you have an ensemble firing on nearly all cylinders.
Stahelski choreographs the protracted impossibilities of hand-to-hand combat from “The Raid” and “The Raid 2” with Mark Dacascos and the action performers from those movies, Yayan Ruhian and Cecep Arif Rahman.
Die Hard (1988)
Directed by John McTiernan
influenced The Raid (2012)
Plot Characters Themes Visuals
Think "Die Hard" crossed with one of those old karate movies they used to show on Sunday afternoon on WGNO-TV back in the '80s -- and then add an obscene level of violent bloodshed -- and you've got a good idea of what's in store.
But a vertical environment has different rules, and cities have been the setting for game-changing flicks such as "Die Hard" and "Oldboy."
The plot setup is in the vein of "Assault on Precinct 13" and " Die Hard " (among many others), but plot is hardly the point.
Have you ever wondered what "Die Hard" would be like if John McClane knew how to roundhouse-kick people in the face and disarm bloodthirsty, machete-wielding henchmen?
—Mad Dog, Take the closed-set claustrophobia of Die Hard, add the gritty cops versus gangsters nihilism of Assault on Precinct 13, and blend in some Indonesian machete-fu and — voila!
Writer-editor-director Gareth Huw Evans stages "The Raid's" 15 floors of mayhem as if he tossed "Hard Boiled," "Supercop" and "Die Hard" into a blender and hit purée.
Notable highlights include a freewheeling and visceral 30 to 40-person prison-yard brawl, a thrillingly crafted, bone-crunchingly destructive car chase, a wryly funny trio of gangland assassinations, and a tense, violently balletic kitchen-based finale that echoes Bruce Lee’s unfinished masterpiece Game Of Death (by way of a particularly narked-off Gordon Ramsay).
That's it: just one long chase up a skyscraper, an idea simple enough to have served as the basis for one of the greatest of all action films, Die Hard , as well as the Indonesian The Raid: Redemption , which was in U.S. theaters earlier this year; it's also the central idea behind most of the brawler arcade games of the 1990s, which Dredd practically is already - it even has two playable characters.
If you saw last year’s superior police-invasion-of-a-very-bad-guy-stronghold, “The Raid: Redemption,” you experienced the better, more exciting film.
We follow the trials of the helmeted law enforcement officer (the face-obscuring headgear remains atop good-sport actor Karl Urban's dome for the entire running time, as it should), who is judge, jury, and executioner in a plot that is otherwise a retread of The Raid: Redemption.
Directed by Pete Travis, "Dredd 3D" becomes burdened by the same structural dilemma as the recent "The Raid: Redemption" — once the cops are locked into fighting their way out of the building the film simply becomes a monotonous series of bad-guy confrontations.
Pretty soon, you have The Raid: Redemption with less martial arts and a lot more exploding bodies.
Upon seeing the trailers and TV spots for " Dredd 3D ," you probably noticed how similar it looks to " The Raid: Redemption ."
Writer/director Gareth Evans is, in a sense, one of those new cinema artists akin to Quentin Tarantino in his “Reservoir Dogs” salad days.
Impersonating "The Departed," "Donnie Brasco," "Reservoir Dogs," etc., Rama goes undercover to locate the mobsters responsible for his brother's murder and disassemble them using only his fists.
Meanwhile, those familiar with the story's forebears (expect comparisons to The Wicker Man ) may find it lacking in the dread department, especially when compared to contemporaries like Ben Wheatley's Kill List .
But Evans adds in British folk-horror like 1968’s Witchfinder General and Ken Russell’s controversial 1971 film The Devils, as well as contemporary takes on the genre, like Ben Wheatley’s Kill List.
That’s where “Apostle” delivers something cult-centric cult movies like “The Wicker Man” and “Kill List” never could: It can break from reality and actually confront the source of their pagan beliefs.
A throwback to the type of stripped-down thriller that might have attracted John Carpenter before the "Assault on Precinct 13" director lost his mojo, the English-subtitled "The Raid" is probably the purest action movie to reach a Memphis theater since Thailand's "Ong-Bak" in 2005.
"The Raid" ends up mixing classic John Woo-style action with the tense siege atmosphere of John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13."
Only God Forgives (2013)
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
influenced The Raid 2 (2014)
Visuals Themes
Production design with its greens and blues is often reminiscent of the stylish but abhorrent "Only God Forgives," cinematography sometimes seems death defying and sound is visceral.
Two particularly nasty assassins, the aptly named Baseball Bat Man (Very Tri Yulisman) and Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), feel straight out of the Tarantino playbook, particularly in a climactic endgame whose red-walled production design seems to be channeling “Only God Forgives.”
Ranging from brutal to cruel to savage to neo-nihilist, “The Raid 2” is even a few choreographed steps beyond the dour, dim canvas of Refn’s “Only God Forgives.”
Think Hard Boiled, but in tighter spaces.
Writer-editor-director Gareth Huw Evans stages "The Raid's" 15 floors of mayhem as if he tossed "Hard Boiled," "Supercop" and "Die Hard" into a blender and hit purée.
At their best, face-offs in the first film brought to mind the fluid, balletic destruction of prime John Woo, particularly Hard Boiled , and select set-pieces in the follow-up do impress.
With The Raid 2 Evans has escalated action filmmaking the same way that the gun fu classics The Killer and Hard Boiled did back at the turn of the 1990s.
In 1948's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Alfonso Bedoya's bandit sneered a classic snatch of dialogue at Humphrey Bogart's prospector: "Badges?
For example, last year's shocking documentary The Act of Killing, a Denmark/Norway/UK production directed by American Joshua Oppenheimer, combined bloodletting and farce in its account of unrepentant paramilitary killers boasting of their slaughter of Indonesian "communists" in the 1960s.
Though directed by a filmmaker from Wales, Gareth Evans (who has just done the new Godzilla film), the Raid series is set in Indonesia, the location for the recent documentary The Act of Killing, about memories of murder.
There Will Be Blood (2007)
Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson
influenced Apostle (2018), The Raid 2 (2014)
Music Plot
Similarly, the hard-charging score courtesy of composers Fajar Yusekemal and Aria Prayogi, who also handled the music on both of The Raid films, has clangy echoes of Johnny Greenwood's manically taut There Will Be Blood compositions.
Worse yet, the overall point or theme of this intricately woven crime saga is unclear, as the violent climax doesn’t work nearly as smartly or as effectively as, say, the final moments of PT Anderson’s There Will Be Blood – which this movie has “borrowed” from quite liberally…
No doubt Evans has been to school on the classic Hong Kong action movies of the ’80s and ’90s, and is also steeped in a venerable American drive-in aesthetic: Imagine if John Woo had directed “Escape From New York,” and Kurt Russell’s Snake Plissken wasn’t just a badass but a finely honed Indonesian fighting machine.