The Raid: Redemption
Director: Gareth Evans
Year Released: 2011
Rating: 2.5
A SWAT team - in Indonesia - foolhardily storms an apartment complex overrun with bad guys: you can tell the SWAT team from the baddies by their choice of attire. This is the latest example of brain-dead - but meticulously shot - kinetic cinema: the particulars don't exactly matter (the highest level of complexity there is: one of the baddies is the brother of the main good guy), so take a look at this guy doing flips and stabbing this thug in the throat with a Bowie knife! It's absolutely intense - and shamelessly brutal - although (for me, at least) the level of violence becomes kind of rote and mechanical after a while; it ends with a sigh of relief, but that's because there's no one left to kill.
