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May 14, 2012100Remember your first time with Hard Boiled? Die Hard? This is how it's done - a clean, hard, constant hit of adrenalin. If it's not the best action movie of the year, we'll eat a fridge.
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Mar 24, 2012100Once the action starts - and it starts very quickly - The Raid is relentless, breathtaking in its sheer propulsive majesty. But it's also shot through with moments of bleak poetry amid the carnage.
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100There are moments when The Raid: Redemption doesn't feel like an action movie so much as pure action itself, delivered in strong, undiluted doses and with the sort of creative one-upmanship capable of rejuvenating a stale, seen-it-all genre.
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91This is the sort of film for which the phrase 'movie-movie' was coined -- and coined as a term of highest praise.
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Mar 24, 201291Extraordinary stunt and fight work and nonstop excitement, but a warning to those who are at all squeamish: this may be the most violent movie I've ever seen.
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91American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.
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90It offers some of the best Asian martial-arts choreography of recent years and an electric, claustrophobic puzzle-palace atmosphere that'll leave you wrung out and buzzed.
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90It's exhausting, exhilarating, riveting stuff that fans of high-octane filmmaking should not miss.
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88Poised at the midway point between an ultraviolent video game and a neo-classic dance musical. As midnight-movie mash-ups go, it's pretty amazing.
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88Unapologetically brutal and unencumbered by much plot, Raid is the year's most turbo-charged film.
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83Remember that ultra-violent scene in "Old Boy" when the dude plowed through a subway platform of bad guys and was the only one left standing? Multiply it by four or five and that's The Raid: Redemption.
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83Gareth 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.
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Mar 27, 201280An orgiastic barrage of violence, The Raid: Redemption is, at least in its finest moments, one of the most breathless, blistering action movies in recent memory.
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80Arguably the most dynamic Asian action film since the 1990s peaks of John Woo and Tsui Hark, The Raid: Redemption works as sheer gladiatorial ballet.
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80Lean, fast-moving, and filled with game-changing fight sequences that have a brutally beautiful (or beautifully brutal) quality, Gareth Evans's Indonesian martial-arts film The Raid: Redemption lives up to its viral hype.
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80Taking the genre to a higher level of intensity, the Welsh-born Evans continues what he started in previous Indonesia-set actioner "Merantau," but this picture will seal his cult status.
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75When it comes to The Raid: Redemption, there are no pretentions. Pure and simple, this is about violence. As we used to say, "kickin' ass and takin' names."
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75Plot, characterization and dialogue are merely the frame here for the real goods, an immersion into the Indonesian martial arts form known as silat.
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75The action is brutal, bloody and virtually nonstop in this adrenaline-packed riff on "Assault on Precinct 13.''
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Mar 22, 201275Iko Uwais is not exactly a household name, but the Indonesian heartthrob appears to be well on his way with The Raid: Redemption, a clever, action-packed film that showcases his movie-star looks, low-key charisma and breathtaking martial arts skills.
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Mar 22, 201275There's a sliver of a plot to The Raid, but it's really not worth going over -- when the characters pause to talk, which is rare, it does tend to kill the film's momentum.
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70If you like martial-arts films, it's well worth your while, a non-stop orgy of brilliantly choreographed fight scenes. Eventually it's all too much, a blur of fists, blades and snapped bones that run together. Still, it's a wild ride.
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67I do wish that Evans were a better storyteller. When he isn't turning mad-dog violence into visual rock & roll, The Raid shreds narrative coherence to ribbons.
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63Built on shaky and blood-soaked ground, but if towering technique is all you want from an action movie, then yippee-ki-yay.
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63The Raid is maniacal in its pacing and assault tactics. It's also, absurdly, rated R. Fantastic. I love that a film this gory secured the same Motion Picture Association of America rating as "The King's Speech."
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63This mostly no-nonsense, floor-by-floor ass-kicking panorama is admirably humble.
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60This is a movie to be experienced on a more visceral level. As long as you don't expect anything more, you won't be disappointed.
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60The special effects here are wiry martial artists grunting their way through fight after fight. It's exhausting but exhilarating.
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50The Raid: Redemption definitely delivers everything that international action fans want. The question I have is whether the laws of supply and demand are adequate tools for evaluating a movie's worth.
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30The mousetrap setup and tight fight spaces, the bad blood and cruel deaths - soon makes the movie grindingly monotonous, a blur of thudding body blows.
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25This film is about violence. All violence. Wall-to-wall violence. Against many of those walls, heads are pounded again and again into a pulpy mass. If I estimated the film has 10 minutes of dialogue, that would be generous.