Left to Right: Iko Uwais as Rama and Sofyan Alop as Machete Gang [Member] #5Photo by Akhirwan Nurhaidir, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

There’s a great science project bubbling under the 101 minutes of The Raid: Redemption: Gravity and the Fighting Indonesian. One of the major things you learn in self-defense is to use your opponent’s momentum against them. So when a screaming Indonesian thug comes turning the corner in a hallway and charges at you with a machete, you take his arm mid swing and follow through – on a light fixture, or, if it’s a downward swing, flip him over and send him hurtling falling hard on his back on a linoleum tile floor. Worried about asbestos abatement? Son, this is Indonesia. We salt our leeches with asbestos dust.

Rama (Iko Uwais) is a newbie on a special ops team charged with bringing down a crime lord (Ray Sahetaphy) from the fifteen-story apartment building he’s taken over. The concept is simple: corruption and alliances shift in this renegade landscape of stacked concrete. The execution is so violent it gave me a headache. But the fight choreography throughout the film becomes a kind of ballet, with an extended pas de deux here, a climactic pas de trois there, as characters weave in and out of this dance. Extended fight scenes that highlight a few performers alternate with showcases for Uwais, who looks mild mannered but proves his strength early on. Some of his scenes have a cartoonish rush, as one after another Indonesian thug runs turns a corner running down the hallway screaming with a machete to be easily dispatched one and two at a time by the rookie. I plan to teach my niece this game. Other dance numbers/fight sequences are both more intense and and at the same time more sophisticated. And all the fight scenes are shot the way dance should be shot: wide enough so you can usually see where everyone’s feet are.

Left to Right: Yayan Ruhian as Mad Dog and Eka “Piranha” Rahmadia as DaguPhoto by Akhirwan Nurhaidir, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

This is just the second feature for Uwais, who worked with writer/director Gareth Huw Evans on Merentau, a film that introduced audiences to the varieties of the Indonesian martial art of Pencak Silat. Uwais’ major foe in Raid is the diminutive but deadly Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian). To continue the ballet comparison, Ruhian would be one of the featured dancers of this motley crew.

As brutal and frenetic as the film is, it’s brilliantly staged. The stuntmen take a forbidding fifteen-story tenement, as their stage, propelling themselves off walls, using the building as buffer and weapon, and not recognizing the limitations of walls and floors as they axe their way into and out of danger. It can be seen as a fictional companion piece to the documentary The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. That film surveyed the horrors of public housing, and while housing policies in this Indonesian precinct are not addressed, the apartment building upon which these thugs ply their wares is appropriately brutalist. The Raid: Redemption is obviously not for everyone, but if you think it’s for you, you’ll love it.

The Raid: Redemption
Written and directed by Gareth Huw Evans
Starring Iko Uwais, JoeTaslim, Ray Sahetapy, Yayan Ruhian.
Opens today at E Street Landmark and AMC Georgetown.