Roger Ebert was Wrong About The Raid

I'm not a violent person. The closest I've ever come to a real fight was a minor scuffle in high school. My recollection of that incident is fuzzy, but only because it happened so long ago that no one had a cellphone to capture the whole stupid thing (thank The Great God Gherkin), not because I got hit in the head. I don't think it even involved any actual punches, though I may or may not have bitten someone.

Okay, upon further reflection, maybe I am more of a violent person than I imagine. I was very angry as a teenager and I don't think that anger ever went away. I did become a lot better at managing it though. It might be fair to say that a violent person lives inside me but I haven't let it out to play since high school.

I've wanted to though. Oh how I've wanted to. Who among us hasn't had an urge to punch someone in the face once in a while? But somehow my rational brain has always kept those impulses locked down. I tend toward de-escalation when conflict arises. But there's a part of me that wants to do the opposite. Part of me longs for combat. It's really quite absurd.

I believe this is what attracts me to the work of Gareth Evans. On my first viewing I had never seen anything like The Raid before. I'd seen plenty of martial arts movies, action movies and thrillers, but nothing that conveyed brutality in such inventive and effective ways. At the time, it was just what I wanted to see. I can't remember exactly what, but I was angry about something at the time. Facebook was probably involved. Regardless, I found myself searching YouTube for "most brutal fight scenes" or something along those lines, and that's how I discovered The Raid: Redemption.

Roger Ebert hated this film, calling it senseless carnage. He wasn't wrong. The plot of The Raid is unremarkable, and there's not much character development. This is not that kind of movie. That is not to say the film is devoid of humanity, as Ebert claimed. There is a moment when Rama, the hero of the story, limps down a hallway with a wounded compatriot, and has to beg the one decent tenant in the building to let them in before they are found. This sets up a tense scene that involves no action at all, as the two hide behind a wall waiting for the bad guys to leave. They are nearly discovered when one of those bad guys starts plunging his machete through the drywall, getting closer and closer until it slices Rama's cheek. It's a terrifying moment, conveying real stakes for Rama and the family that helped him.

Ebert later said that the film worked for its intended audience, but he took a rather dim view of that audience. He viewed The Raid's success as a sign of creative malignancy in the film industry. He misunderstood the purpose of The Raid, which was not to glorify violence (though you could argue it does that), but to showcase the Indonesian martial art, pencak silat, along with the stellar fight choreography of the film's stars, Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian. The film does this in spectacular fashion. It was a creation of passion, not a cynical ploy to sell movie tickets to the rubes.

Almost a decade and a half later, and Hollywood's artistic decay is impossible to deny. But if you're looking for a film to blame, you'd find a more appropriate target in a film like The Avengers, released about a year after The Raid. I have nothing against The Avengers as a film but its wild success paved the way for the superhero-flooded, IP-driven creative wasteland in which the industry is currently drowning.

The Raid, on the other hand, elevated the genre. While its budget was around 224 million dollars less than The Avengers, it still managed to inspire a higher level of fight choreography across the industry. The Raid's influence can be seen in movies like Atomic Blonde, Extraction, and even in the Marvel universe (see the iconic hallway fight in Netflix's Daredevil). It also paved the way for a little movie called John Wick. Say what you will about the Wick franchise, but it wasn't a remake or reboot or spinoff or an adaptation of a novel or a comic book or a Broadway play. It was something new, which is a precious rarity these days.

Some say The Bourne Identity ruined Hollywood action movies by inspiring a generation of over-cut, shaky cam garbage. If so, The Raid was a good antidote. So it turns out the answer to Ebert's question, "Who, or what, is redeemed?" is the action movie genre itself.