Hardly any action film after the turn of the millennium came out of nowhere like this and ultimately triggered a worldwide hype that continues to this day. If you haven’t seen “The Raid” yet, you can catch up on the brutally violent spectacle on TV tonight.
There are always those films that come out of nowhere – and thrill their audience so much that suddenly everyone is talking about them. This is exactly what Gareth Evans managed to do over ten years ago with “The Raid”. The action thriller from Indonesia, produced for a ridiculous 1.1 million dollars, became a worldwide phenomenon, which not only led to a sequel, “The Raid 2”, but also to many, many films that went in a similar direction – and together founded the Raidsploitation genre. However, those who prefer to stick with the original and finally cross it off their watchlist have the opportunity to do so today.
RTL Zwei will be showing “The Raid” on 7 October 2022 from 11.40 p.m. – and in the uncut FSK 18 version. And the best thing is: if you are too exhilarated to go to sleep after all the slaughter and fighting, you can continue with “The Raid 2” straight away. It runs directly afterwards, from 1.40 am.
If you don’t feel like staying up all night, you can of course watch both films on DVD and Blu-ray as well as stream them. “The Raid” and “The Raid 2” are currently available on Joyn and are also included in the superfresh channel on Amazon Prime Video, which you can try out for free.
Never mind whether you stream the films, watch them on DVD or Blu-ray or on TV (from 23.00): You can expect two outstandingly choreographed, hard-hitting action fireworks with an 18 rating – which are nevertheless quite different in the end.
“THE RAID”: BRUTE ACTION WITHOUT A BREAK
In “The Raid” you can expect almost 100 minutes of action that hardly give you time to breathe. The rough story is quickly told: After the police have so far failed miserably to storm the apartment block in which gangster boss Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy) and his henchmen are hiding, it is now up to a 20-man special unit to finish the job. One of them: the inexperienced rookie Rama (Iko Uwais), who fights his way up floor by floor in the course of a slaughter that goes completely off the rails in order to bring Tama to justice.
No long ramblings on content, no unnecessary additional storylines that would only slow the film down and rows and rows of hand-to-hand fights and shootouts in which director Gareth Evans (“Gangs Of London”) takes no prisoners: “The Raid” is straightforward, bone-breaking action cinema without compromise and burns itself into the memory not only with never-before-seen fights, but above all with its incredibly fast-paced staging. Sit back, buckle up and let it sweep you away!
“The Raid 2” combines the strengths of the first part with elements of Mafia cinema – and goes one better in all areas – at least in the opinion of the author of these lines. After all, the sequel is almost 50 (!) minutes longer than the first film. And those have to be filled, after all. In keeping with the motto “more is more”, director Evans included even more insane action sequences in part 2, but on top of that he packed them into a story full of twists and turns, as a kind of homage to the Hong Kong action cinema of the 80s. The result: an action epic that leaves nothing to be desired.
