I tried to embrace this film since it seems like so many other people do, but I just don't care for it. I will give it one thing: A lot of the fight sequences are compelling. I got very involved in a couple of them and felt myself exhale and relax after a long fight had me tensed up.
But
that was as involved as I got with anything in The Raid. The flat characters and meager plot reminded
me mostly of a porn film where you get the littlest string of a story to tie
together the action scenes, and for all the vitality in the fights, even they eventually
began to have a certain monotony. I’m
not a connoisseur of the martial arts film, but do the bad guys usually wait in
line so they can come at the hero to get beat up one-by-one?
I thought
of two other film references in trying to figure out what missed the mark for
me here. One was Quentin Tarantino, a
director whose work I respect for flourish but that usually fails to move me
because of its emphasis on action and citation.
I don’t share the public’s affection for Tarantino either since I find his work
more like manipulation of genre elements or reference to film history than
looking into the heart, one of the things I most enjoy in cinema.
I
also thought of Oldboy...in fact, of Park Chan Woo’s whole Vengeance
Trilogy. There is certainly heightened,
stylized fighting and violence in these films, the scene outside the elevator
in Oldboy coming to mind right away. But
Park’s films have characters who suffer, win, lose and grow. These films are far superior to The Raid.
I was
disappointed in this film, but that's likely because the genre doesn’t
speak to me. I can spend a great deal of
time watching story-impoverished fantasy and science fiction as long as there
are good visuals or at least a good idea to engage me, but I can’t do the same
for martial arts films. It’s just a
question of taste, and I haven't acquired a taste for these.
