The Raid: Redemption

I caught The Raid: Redemption last night, because the movie channels show about one flick per week I'm interested in. I'm guessing it was dubbed? The voices didn't seem to quite match. Not sure how much of a difference that made, though I usually find dubbed voices (at least on live-action things) to rob lines of their impact. Even if the voice actor and the actor are doing their best, somehow it doesn't mesh right.

Not that I was watching for the depth of the performances. I was watching to check out the action sequences, and the movie has plenty of those. I was disappointed I didn't see anybody get kicked through walls, or take a heel stomp to the chest that knocked them down to the next floor. I guess the movie was trying to be somewhat realistic in terms of what people could do. There were a lot of little bits that were good - the knife work, Rama slamming a guy's head against the wall repeatedly, but working down the wall as the guy falls to do it. The fight in the drug lab was pretty good, the old lieutenant not doing any high-flying maneuvers, but typically grabbing and swinging whatever he could find. Two guys jumping onto either end of a table and sprinting full out towards each other. The fights flow, nobody mows through opponents. You can feel them adjusting to each other's styles, getting sloppy as they get winded, regaining the advantage when they can.

I thought the fight with the two brothers teaming up against the "mad dog" was really well done. Even a neophyte like myself could pick up on differences in the styles, and they gave it enough time to show the advantages and disadvantages for two guys fighting one guy. The build-up was excellent. There was a minute or two of everyone getting themselves ready, the mad dog letting the one brother down so his sibling could free him. They'd already established the mad dog liked to fight, so it made sense he'd wait, and it lets the anticipation build. Even though he seems like he's going to wait until they're ready, you're still thinking "he's the bad guy", and the brothers are just urgent enough in bandaging a wound to have that hint that he might jump them early. But he waits, and so do we, and he's so casual about it. Rama hasn't even seen the guy fight, but he's just as apprehensive as his brother, simply from how Mad Dog carries himself.

In the early stages of the movie, I thought everything was going too smoothly. Then things stopped going smoothly, and at the same time, you realize it doesn't matter, they never had the element of surprise. That comes right about the time the cops realize everything's going wrong, but I don't think they realize it in quite the same way. Which is kind of coo, even if it all leads to the same place. Namely, that a whole lot of them are about to die horribly.

The lieutenant should have run out of bullets one shot sooner, I think. Which could have made for an exciting end in its own right, but I don't have any complaints with how things went.