Teddy Chan’s martial arts crime movie Kung Fu Killer is like the Hong Kong industry’s version of an NBA All-Star Game: It’s fun to watch the best-of-the-best whoop on each other, but it’s also a largely low-stakes affair with few long-term implications. Boasting a packed roster of Hong Kong legends, the film is a gauntlet exhibition of martial arts mayhem, but it leaves a lot to be desired in the style department: Though well choreographed, the fight scenes are shot in a way that feels pedestrian when compared to the Raid series or The Grandmaster. It’s a kung fu smorgasbord brimming with action that somehow still leaves your stomach rumbling.

The movie is structured as a serial killer procedural, the killer in question played by Wang Baoqiang. He’s a multi-disciplined martial arts master who’s hunting down the best single-disciplined masters (e.g. kickboxing, grappling, weaponed) and beating them at their own game (Mr. Weapons gets his throat slit; Mr. Grappler gets thrown out a window). It’s sort of like a Game of Death role reversal: instead of a hero hunting down baddies one by one, it’s a baddie picking off (and apart) the good guys. The killer’s back story is a cluster of clichés (like the rest of the movie), his defining characteristic being his club foot which he’s disciplined himself to use to his advantage in combat. Other than that, he’s nothing more than a store brand psycho.

He picks off the martial arts experts like cherries from a cherry tree, and the only one who can stop him is…Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. But that would hardly be a fair fight, so instead we get normal person-sized ass-kicker and Ip Man star Donnie Yen, who plays kung fu instructor Hahou Mo. Locked up in prison for involuntary manslaughter, Mo is given an opportunity at freedom by a plucky police detective (Charlie Yeung, turning in the movie’s best non-combat performance) who enlists him to track down the hobbling killer and fight him to the death.

The plot is a thin-as-rice-paper excuse to zip from one fight scene to the next. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World comes to mind as the killer confronts each of the fighters on his list in their coincidentally cool-looking natural habitats. Baoqiang fights the martial artists (each played by a wushu flick regular making a quick cameo) in a cramped tattoo parlor, on top of a giant hanging skeleton art exhibit, on an action movie set (ha ha), and high above the city streets, in the obligatory rooftop chase/fight set piece. Each set is a fun playground for the actors to have fun with and get inventive, but they all feel contrived and cheesy looking, like stages pulled straight out of Street Fighter II.

The climactic final battle between Mo and the killer is fought in the middle of a busy street at night, cars and big rigs zooming by as the blitzing warriors duck, dive and dodge around the traffic, throwing cyclonic strikes all the while. The fight choreography is elaborately staged and undeniably impressive both athletically and artistically, but the way everything is filmed feels a bit detached; the camera spins and swirls and dives in and out of the action, but it never gets intimate enough with the violence. Despite terribly violent things happening all the time, none of it feels as brutal or pulverizing as it should. We should wince and squirm when people get sliced by a sword or shot in the gut, but Kung Fu Killer elicits no such reaction.

I’m admittedly far (very, very far) from a wushu movie aficionado, but the wire work Chan’s movie at times looks ridiculous to me. Instead of accentuating natural movements, the actors just dart from side to side, up and down, barely using their feet. I’m not against stretching the laws of gravity at all (I usually think it looks awesome), but there are moments in Kung Fu Killer when the actors look like they’re being tugged around by giant invisible hands. It’s a preference thing; after watching the smash-mouth action in the Ong-bak and Raid series, floaty wire work just feels more sterile and unexciting to me. Maybe it’s a phase, or maybe I’m just a no-good noob, but I would have liked to see Chan and his team get their hands a little dirtier.

Set in pre-colonial New Zealand, The Dead Lands follows a Maori boy (James Rolleston) who recruits a legendary warrior (Lawrence Makoare) to help him avenge his tribe and father, who were slaughtered in a violent act of treachery. Directed by Toa Fraser, the film is a brutal, grimy tale of revenge that focuses on Maori martial arts, a form of combat seldom, if ever, seen on-screen. It’s a rare representation of New Zealand culture in its purest form, as well as a thrilling beat-’em-up in the vein of ’80s and ’90s action classics like Rambo and Predator. We recently spoke to Fraser about representing New Zealand cinema, his partnership with Gareth Evans and the Raid crew, the tradition of physical expression in New Zealand, actors acting with their bodies, constraints fueling creativity, and much more.

The Dead Lands is out in limited release today.

Coming from an American perspective, The Dead Lands is unique on several levels, especially because my familiarity with the Maori is so limited.
Me and all the cast grew up watching Terminator 2 and Commando, so from our point of view, it was an opportunity to tell a story in our world in a way that we wanted to when we were kids, playing with broomsticks and smacking each other over the head, wondering what it would be like to be one of our ancestors. There’s a great storytelling tradition we grew up with, stories from the Pacific that have been handed down from generation to generation. They were told in a particular kind of way, and they often had this ghostly quality to them, as well as an athletic, muscly quality. We wanted to tell the story in the way our ancestors might have if they had access to the tools and equipment we have these days.

The film’s mostly been talked about as an action movie, and while it is, I think it’s better categorized as a martial arts movie. Is that fair?
Yeah, sure. We worked with XYZ Films on this and Gareth Evans was really helpful to me. I had a great couple of conversations with him. All of those Raid guys have been very supportive of us. There was this really awesome sort of conversation across the ocean between Indonesia and New Zealand during pre-production. New Zealand kind of sits in the middle of Western and Eastern storytelling traditions.

The fighting is really in-your-face and intimate, really small-scale.
We wanted to do that. There was a way to make this film with a bigger budget, with helicopter shots and wires and slow motion, but we wanted to keep it bare-bones, raw, and real, but with a graphic novel quality as well. It’s a film that draws from many influences across the world.

If I’m being honest, I’ve lived a very sheltered life. I’ve never been in a real fight, and I haven’t inflicted much physical harm on anyone else. So watching your characters, whose lives and culture are so ingrained in violence, is really fascinating to me. Can you talk about the psychology of your characters, who answer the call to violence so readily?
I suppose the most important thing that springs to mind while listening to you speak is this idea of there being a sense of a code of violence and combat in this world. That was really important to us when we were making the movie. There’s not just fighting, but a lot of pre-fight theatricality and dance and posturing, that tongue-waggling stuff, which is as important as the fighting, almost. My experience growing up as a teenager in Auckland…I was involved in fights growing up. It was quite a part of our culture. We were really aware that violence was a major part of the language of this movie, but at the same time we wanted to talk about the code around it as well.

I talk about this a lot: I think not enough attention is given to actors who act with their bodies. I think your actors are phenomenally expressive storytellers with their bodies.
That’s awesome. A great compliment. That comes from theater as much as anything else. A lot of these guys come from a theater tradition. In fact, there was a production of Troilus and Cressida in Maori at Shakespeare’s Globe in London about a year and a half before we made this movie, and a lot of the actors that were involved in that, their performances inspired the production of our movie. When we were in L.A. last week, James Cameron gave Xavier Horan a similar compliment. He said, “He moves so well.” It was a beautiful compliment. Our culture is very physically expressive: We love rugby and dancing, and it’s a very strong way of expressing ourselves, through physicality.

Whenever you’re watching the Academy Awards and they show clips of the acting nominees, we only ever see them doing these dialogue scenes in little rooms. We never see someone praised for expressing themselves with their bodies.
I did a dance film before this, Giselle, and I worked closely with Ethan Stiefel on that, the great American choreographer. He’s a martial arts guy himself, so we talked a lot about, for this film, the body language of a warrior and what he thought a warrior would move like. Low center of gravity, a lot of weight in the knees. I totally agree with you.

I think Lawrence Makoare’s physical stuff is great. Whether he’s beating people up or laying on the ground hurt, he’s a great storyteller. What discussions did you have with him about his physical performance before shooting?
I didn’t really know what kind of movie I was going to make until Lawrence came in and did his audition. He did a performance of one of the emotional scenes that was pretty good. I gave him a tiny bit of direction, and his next version was amazing. We all sat around on the floor crying. Lawrence, referring to his tears, said, “Don’t you think this will make me weaker?” I said, “No, it makes you stronger.” He was a long way away physically and linguistically from where he wanted to be for that character, so I trained with him and a trainer for four weeks. It was hell. When it came to shooting, we didn’t have to talk much. We had each others’ back.

You’ve said that movies done in pre-colonialism New Zealand don’t really exist, and that it’s an untapped time in history. Would you like to revisit the time period again?
I loved making this movie, and it’s very much in the tradition of the stories we grew up with. In terms of New Zealand cinema, this is only the second full-length feature film in Maori. We were very aware that we were tentatively opening a door, and we worked hard to make sure the door was opened properly.

You’ve also said that you’re a big proponent of creativity being born of constraints. Can you give me a specific example of how constraints helped your creativity on this film?
I guess I mentioned it before, but going for a very brutal, dusty, sweaty, bloody kind of style was born out of constraints. We didn’t have a massive budget, so we didn’t have drone cameras or helicopter shots. The whole ethos was born of a tight schedule and a desire to tell a story in a way that we feel is very much a part of us.

There’s a nighttime fight scene in the film that looks incredible.
That was a real collaboration over months to get that scene to look right, from the beautiful location of Piha Beach in Auckland to the post-production facilities in London. Raukura Turei, who plays Mehe, the only female warrior in the movie, had a big sense of responsibility herself. When she rehearsed the scene she was doing it on a nice clean floor, but I forgot to tell her we’d be doing it in a stream and that there would be rocks under her feet. But the real key to the look of that scene was Leon Narbey’s great cinematography, but also a very talented colorist in London named Sam Chynoweth. Grading and coloring movies is such a massive part of the process these days. When I found out he was working in the building, I said, “We need that guy!” Turns out Sam was one of the guys who colored The LEGO Movie, which is one of the massive achievements in visual pizazz in the last ten years. He worked really hard. We actually shot that scene in daytime. If you’re into the look of that scene, it’s largely down to a modest guy in a post-production place in London.

Welsh-born filmmaker Gareth Evans’ The Raid: Redemtion shook up the martial arts movie genre in 2011 with its exhilarating action, scintillating fight choreography, and no-holds-barred brutality. The film didn’t have much of a plot to speak of: A police raid on an apartment building filled with deadly gangsters doesn’t go as planned, and voila! We’ve got a killer action movie. Droves of martial arts movie devotees flocked to Evans’ mini-masterpiece of bodily destruction, and now he’s followed it up with The Raid 2: Berandal, a sprawling film (it’s an hour longer) with an expanded narrative element and, impossibly, better fight scenes than the original.

Picking up right where the first film left off, we rejoin ass-kicking rookie cop Rama (Iko Uwais), who’s thrown into a new mission before he can wipe the dried blood from his fists. He’s sent behind bars undercover to earn the trust of Uco (Arifin Putra), the arrogant only son of crime lord Bangun (Tio Pakusodewo). After saving Uco’s skin a few times (most notably during an incredible prison riot sequence set in a muddier than muddy courtyard), Rama (now going by the name Yuda) becomes his right-hand man and earns himself a spot as a henchman in Bangun’s mob after serving his 4-year sentence in the slammer. Making this absurd commitment to his undercover work even more difficult is the fact that he’s left his family to fend for themselves, missing a big chunk of his son’s childhood. While Rama is under Bangun’s employ, a gang war erupts, stemming from a few shady dealings made by Uco, who’s been obsessed with the fact that he’s relegated to diminutive tasks by his father despite being the sole heir to the throne. Amid the chaos, Rama discovers that the cops he works for may be as unscrupulous as the criminals.

While The Raid takes place over the course of a day, The Raid 2 covers several years and locations, and narratively, the scale and depth Evans adds here is staggering. The intricacies of the gang dynamics, set against the backdrop of Bangun and Uco’s father-son conflict and the even larger Sisyphean tale of Rama, can be overwhelming at times. When your adrenaline is still running high following a fight scene and you’re chomping at the bit for more, it’s hard to keep your brain focused on the finer plot details which, if you miss too many, can pile up and make it hard to keep track. Once all is said and done, the overall shape of the story comes across clearly, but some expositional segments feel disposable, especially when sandwiched in between the film’s amazing fight sequences.

The fights are so breathless, so immaculately constructed and filmed that it bandages any negative impact the inflated story has on the experience. Uwais is marvelous on screen, moving at light speed, with pinpoint precision and controlled viciousness. It must take a world of focus and practice to pull of the superhuman choreography Uwais and his team have designed, but every move he and the supporting fighters make looks spontaneous and urgent.

And urgency is what informs Evans’ camera, which is as nimble and mobile as the actors. In an amazing shot, a man is sprinting toward the camera and then suddenly jumps laterally, crashing through a window and landing on his side on the ground. Evans twists the camera with the actor, falling from vertical to horizontal, a kinetic, jaw-dropping effect. He’s a brilliant action director and editor, always knowing exactly what to show, how long to show it, and how to make each blow look unimaginably painful. Cinematographers Matt Flannery and Dimas Imam Subhono, who also worked on the first film, have outdone themselves here, making the tornado-like fights easy to follow and coherent.

The gore factor is high here, even higher than its bloody predecessor. Body parts are twisted and turned the wrong way, skin is slashed, and heads get caved in by a variety of deadly instruments (including a baseball bat, swung by the aptly, hilariously named Baseball Bat Man). This is midnight horror movie-level stuff, for sure. The sheer variety of the fights stands out, with each scenario giving Uwais and his dance partners something different to do. There are fights in cramped spaces like a bathroom stall and the backseat of a car; there are wide-open brawls in flat arenas like the aforementioned riot scene, and in vertical arenas like a night club with cascading balconies; and there’s even a car chase that may be the most violent since Tarantino’s Death Proof.

The crowning jewel of the film, however, is the climactic one-on-one kitchen fight scene, which is perhaps the best I’ve ever seen. It’s a beautiful crescendo of intricate exchanges, false stops, and ferocious flashes of violence. What’s most impressive is that the scene is long, but in a good way: We feel exhausted ourselves watching them devote every fiber of their being to the battle, and as it goes on and on, the characters seem to develop an inexplicable wordless bond as kindred warriors born to battle each other at that very moment. It’s strangely emotional and completely riveting. The Raid 2 is a gloriously savage affair that ups the ante more than any action movie in recent memory.

The Raid 2 trailer

2011’s The Raid: Redemption was an adrenaline-pumping, relentless martial arts movie that wowed action movie lovers and garnered a ravenous fan following. With The Raid 2: Berandal, director Gareth Evans manages to make the fight scenes even more intense and intricate this time around, a tall task following the high bar set by the first film. He’s deepened the drama as well, giving lead star Iko Uwais some dramatic dialog scenes to sink his teeth into in between ass-kicking.

We got a chance to sit with Gareth and Iko in San Francisco and chat about how The Raid 2‘s story was actually written before The Raid‘s, out-doing the first film’s already over-the-top choreography, Gareth’s take on violence in film, Iko using his real life family for inspiration, and more. Check out parts 1 and 2 of our conversation below.

Part 1

Part 2

Now that we are half way through the year, the staff here at Way Too Indie has decided to come up with the Best Films of 2012…so far. There is a good chance our list could see some major changes when we do our Top 10 of the Year article. But it is also likely that some of the stronger films we listed here will end up on our article at the end of the year.

Dustin Jansick’s Picks
Obviously, it is tough to do a Best Films of the year post half way through the year as some of highly anticipated titles have not been released yet. In fact, we are just starting to get releases from films that showed at Toronto International Film Festival last year. I also want to give a shout out at a few films that may have made my list had I seen them in time, Beats of the Southern Wild, Alps, Sound of My Voice, and Safety Not Guaranteed.

#1 Jeff, Who Lives At Home

Jeff, Who Lives At Home may not quite rank up there with the Duplass brother’s first feature The Puffy Chair but it would be tough to argue that it is not their most polished work to date. The film delivers a powerful message about believing that things in life happen for a reason but does so blurring the line between genuine and whimsical. It also balances a good amount of emotional scenes with comical ones making it a fun watch for just about anyone. For these reasons I list it as my favorite film of 2012 so far.

Jeff, Who Lives at Home Review | Watch Trailer

#2 Your Sister’s Sister

If my admiration for Mark Duplass is not apparent enough, I have mentioned it several times, including two films he is involved in on my list surely makes it clear. In Your Sister’s Sister he steps in front of the camera as the lead instead of behind as the director. The film takes an incredibly simple premise and makes it into an engrossing story thanks to the wonderful dialog and cast members. The most shocking part is the film was made in just 12 days.

Your Sister’s Sister Review | Watch Trailer

#3 Beyond the Black Rainbow

Beyond the Black Rainbow should come with a warning sticker that says, “Caution: This film is not for everyone.” Aside from the opening and ending 10 minutes this film does not contain much a plot. In fact, the parts where they focus on the plot are actually the least pleasing as it is then when you noticed reality settling back in from the hypnotic trip in the alternate reality that you were on for the majority of the film. This is an experience that you are unlikely to be a part of for a few years’ to come.

Beyond the Black Rainbow Review | Watch Trailer

#4 Moonrise Kingdom

Moonrise Kingdom would be my number one on a Best Ensemble Cast list of 2012 but is my fourth favorite overall film of the year thus far. The amazing cast includes more high profile actors than you can count on one hand; Billy Murray, Jason Schwartzman, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton. They all shine in Wes Anderson’s fantasy kingdom in which style trumps story. His characters and artful presentation have always been his strong points and Moonrise Kingdom does not deviate from that.

Moonrise Kingdom Review | Watch Trailer

#5 Indie Game: The Movie

Roger Ebert has stated on several occasions that he does not believe video games to be an art medium which he has received a lot of backslash from people that disagree. While Indie Game: The Movie never mentions Ebert’s name, it does make it’s case that video games are an art medium from the very beginning. This well shot and edited documentary will likely inspire you even if you are not a hardcore gamer.

Indie Game Review | Watch Trailer

So far it looks like the quality of 2011’s films are still resonating throughout 2012. While I’m going by North American release dates for my list, everything on my list originally came out last year. That isn’t to say that 2012 films are stinkers though, so far there’s been a few impressive movies that didn’t make the list including The Raid: Redemption, The Cabin in the Woods and Paradise Lost 3: Purgatory. I’ll let these 5 movies speak for themselves, the main purpose of this space to list the films I didn’t get to see before making this list. These include Take This Waltz, Beyond the Black Rainbow, Moonrise Kingdom, Cosmopolis, Damsels in Distress, Your Sister’s Sister, Bonsai, Sound of My Voice, Whores’ Glory, Goodbye First Love, Post Mortem, Jeff Who Lives At Home, Footnote and many more that don’t come to mind at the moment. With that out of the way, here are my five favorite films from this year.

#1 The Turin Horse

Before watching The Turin Horse, Bela Tarr’s final film before going into retirement, I was disappointed that there would be no more movies by the director. After watching it, I felt like there wasn’t any need for Tarr to make another film since The Turin Horse covered everything. It goes to show how powerful Bela Tarr and cinematographer Fred Kelemen’s images and sounds are that people have described this film as the end of cinema. Following six days in the life of two farmers as their horse suddenly refuses to eat or move, Tarr presents their lives as a living hell of banality. We see the farmers go about their daily business repeatedly while the wind howls outside their home and the same music cue is used over and over again. As the movie slowly moves forward towards its apocalyptic ending, it begins to feel like everything in the film is slowly giving up and dying off, as if it can’t bear the crushing weight of despair that’s in every frame. By no means is The Turin Horse an easy watch, but it’s impossible to deny how powerful Bela Tarr’s vision is. Few films are able to make their audience feel like they’ve become a part of its world as well as The Turin Horse does, even if that world is the last place you would ever want to be. It’s a powerful ordeal if you’re up for the challenge, but if you’re able to make it through you’ll come out feeling stronger for it.

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#2 This Must Be the Place

Paolo Sorrentino’s baffling road trip movie, about a retired rocker (Sean Penn) travelling across America to hunt down the Nazi who tortured his father, defies any expectations one would have about the film before actually seeing it. Sean Penn, looking like Robert Smith and talking like a little boy, manages to nail a role that could have easily become too annoying or too campy. Paolo Sorrentino visually matches Penn’s bizarre, gaudy role by throwing out stunning landscapes, beautifully composed framing and operatic crane shots like they’re candy. The combination of both elements might make people run screaming from the film (and judging by its reception at Cannes last year it already has) but if you ignore everything and just go with the movie it’s pure aesthetic bliss.

This Must Be the Place Review | Watch Trailer

#3 Oslo, 31st August

Joachim Trier’s devastating masterpiece may seem nihilistic at first glance, but its opening and closing shots show that this is only one person’s story out of millions in Oslo. Where Oslo, August 31 excels is how well it explains the state of its central character. A recovering addict at 34 years old, Anders (Anders Danielsen Lie in one of the best performances of the year) feels that starting over from scratch isn’t even worth the effort since it won’t benefit him in any substantial way. As he makes his way across town bumping into old friends, we can understand his pain as he feels incapable of having anything resembling the seemingly normal lives of the people around him. By the time we arrive at his family home (shown to be in as much disarray as his mental state), it’s obvious that the film’s conclusion is more inevitable than surprising. The fact that Trier is able to convey all of this while making it look effortless only shows how skilled of a director he is.

Oslo, 31st August Review | Watch Trailer

#4 This Is Not A Film

An act of protest, a dangerous risk, a dissection of filmmaking itself, portrait of a man who’s about to lose everything. This is Not a Film is all of these things and more, an effort by Jafar Panahi to keep making films even while under house arrest awaiting a 6 year prison sentence. Running at a scant 75 minutes, This is Not a Film is one of the most engrossing things to come out in 2012. Anyone who calls themselves a fan of cinema should consider this required viewing.

This Is Not A Film Review | Watch Trailer

#5 The Deep Blue Sea

Terence Davies shows the destructive side of love in The Deep Blue Sea, one of the most beautiful movies of the year. The core cast of Rachel Weisz, Tom Hiddleston and Simon Russell Beale do a great job with Davies’ screenplay (an adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s play of the same name) but it’s Davies’ movie through and through. Every shot is bursting with a romantic, warm look that feels like Davies is unleashing everything he’s been holding back over his 12 year hiatus from narrative filmmaking. The Deep Blue Sea is a welcome comeback and hopefully Davies will keep making films sooner rather than later.

Watch Trailer

Picking my top five was not a hard task. I had a fairly good idea of what was ultimately going to end up on my list. The Grey for the longest time was on my list and in the end, it barely missed. I saw a lot of other films that really could’ve made it if it wasn’t for a last minute influx of great movies (I actually had a great day a couple weeks ago where I saw three terrific films in one day). That doesn’t happen often. My fifth spot was where The Grey was actually going to end up, but ultimately my heart picked a film I enjoyed over one that was probably better all around. That happens sometimes.

#1 Oslo, 31st August

Joachim Trier’s powerful film about a recovering drug addict on a 24 hour outing through a beautiful but lonely Oslo, Norway is by far the year’s best film. The man walks the city with friends as he ponders what his life is worth. The film is gut wrenching in moments with scenes of unbelievable power. Trier’s direction is perfect and the acting by lead Anders Danielsen Lie is sublime. Lie is able to show more emotions through body language than with actual dialogue and at times it is scary how real his performance is. This film will knock your socks off.

Oslo, 31st August Review | Watch Trailer

#2 This Must Be the Place

There are a ton of road trip movies out there. But none of them are like Paolo Sorrentino’s film, which has us following a retired rock star played by Sean Penn who journeys across America to find the ex-Nazi who humiliated his father during World War II. Funny, quirky and at times sad, This Must Be the Place is an odd journey into the identity of a man. The film is superbly directed by Sorrentino and Sean Penn nails the part of Cheyenne, the Goth rock star out for revenge. A film as unique as this is not to be missed.

This Must Be the Place Review | Watch Trailer

#3 Headhunters

I’ve been singing the praises of Scandinavian filmmaking for a few months now and to me Headhunters by Morton Tyldum is one of the best. A corporate headhunter spends his free time as an art thief, often stealing from clients he is trying to hire! One such client happens to be a former mercenary who used to specialize in human tracking. What follows is an intense and brutal chase across Norway. The film masquerades as a black comedy at times but never crosses the line completely. You will get lost in how fun this film is.

Headhunters Review | Watch Trailer

#4 Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

I’ve seen a lot of slow burners in my day, but Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s film about men on a stubborn search for a dead body takes the cake. The film is painfully slow at times, but in the end is immensely rewarding. If you were to pause the film at practically any moment and took a snapshot you would have yourself one hell of a shot. Ceylan’s background is in photography and every single second of this film shows it. Few audiences will be able to stay with the film’s staggering 155 minute runtime, but those who do will likely find a cop procedural that turns out to be a whole lot more than just a search for a body.

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia Review | Watch Trailer

#5 The Raid

Now THIS is an action movie. The Raid begins with a young man training in the early morning before saying goodbye to his pregnant wife before he is thrust into the fight of his life. He is a part of a SWAT team that invades a building in the projects in the massive city of Jakarta. Their goal is to take down a sadistic drug lord who controls the building. While things go smoothly at first, the film soon turns into a tale of survival as the SWAT team is forced to fight their way out of the building after the drug lord puts a huge bounty on their heads. Be forewarned. The Raid is extremely violent. But the film is highly efficient, inventive and never boring. Most action films are throwaways, full of clichés and boring action scenes. The Raid is one hell of a film.

The Raid Review | Watch Trailer