Review of Hummingbird (2013) by Andrewmakatsari — 02 Mar 2017

The Raid is about a 20-man SWAT team task with raiding a 30-story building of a notorious drug kingpin, who is hides the city's most dangerous criminals from cops and makes a hefty living out of it. The SWAT team goes floor by floor securing the building and neutralizing threats, when suddenly on the 6th floor, they get spotted and all hell breaks loose. Simple ain't it ? well that's the beauty of The Raid, at least the first one, it takes what is a very simple premise and engages the viewer with the team, feeling their despair and fright, making them easy to root for and constantly afraid of their safety as the film proves very soon that they're very, VERY expendable. Same goes for our leading man played by the Martial Arts maestro of Indonesia, Iko Uwais, whose introduction of himself, and his family, gives us just enough to know that it's him we will be following through the story but not enough to make us COMPLETELY assured that he will survive, Uwais just sort of carries this John McClane type of charisma with him, you root for the guy without having knowing much about his background(and in all honesty it's better off that way) yet as you imagine yourself in this situation you feel like Rama in a lot of ways, same goes for the rest of the team, from the fierce and loyal Jaka(Joe taslim), to the mysterious and harsh Lieutenant Wahyu, the vaillains are great too, the left and right hand men of the brutal, yet cunning Tama are a perfect balance between a silent fighter and a careful schemer. Each and every character has more personality and depth than you'd expect out of a film with this particular premise and this particular genre.

The action sequences are legendary to this day and will probably serve as bright and energizing examples of how to do, intricate, intense martial arts/action choreography and film it in the most coherent and exhilarating ways possible for many generations to come. Writer/director/editor Gareth Evans has a keen eye for long-takes and brisk editing, combine that with the relentless pace of the film, and you get a non-stop action thrill ride that quite literally BEATS THE **** out of most modern Hollywood blockbusters of this caliber. These are people who have passion and skill to make the action as hard-hitting and natural as possible, and the choreography by the cast members including Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, who plays the vicious and nearly unkillable Mad Dog in the film, is nothing short of consistently inventive and remarkable. The fights are greatly varied too, from the first and only shootout, to machete fights with necks being slammed on the broken door lintels, to single take jumps from A **** WINDOW, and of course the classic Hong Kong action movie style one on one and even two on one showdowns. The most underrated and overlooked aspect of the film, is actually the fact that in some ways it's a horror film as well, a horror-survival martial arts action films is what Wikipedia says and is very true. There's constant tension and fear of detection and discovery as the gang not only outnumbers but outmatches the rapidly dying team. The score by Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, Joe Trapenese and Fajar Yuskemal is superb, perfectly combining, electronic beats with the more rock'n'roll side of the aforementioned band, to create a compelling and visceral score for the fight scenes. All these elements come together to deliver a blistering experience, full of blood, slashed necks and more than enough broken bones.

The Raid is a kinetic, exciting and uncompromising Martial arts action film, that makes you care for performers and love their performance, both emotional and physical. The only reason I'm not giving this a 10, is because I think that the sequel is EVEN BETTER and that if a question was ever put of me deciding to eliminate one Raid film forever, it would definitely be the first.