Expect Twitter to explode shortly with reactions to the Sundance premiere of Gareth Evans' The Raid, the Indonesian actioner that blew minds at Toronto but has been kept largely under wraps until now by Sony Classics, who smartly snatched up the pic and will distribute it this March. I caught The Raid last week at a pre-Sundance screening with its new score by Mike Shinoda -- yes, of Linkin Park -- and can attest that the early praise was well-earned because holy crap, it's amazing. Everything you've heard about it? True.
I know, I just got done ranting about film festival goggles and inflated pre-release hype. But being mindful of falling into that trap, I've thought a lot about The Raid in the days since, and it's stuck. Not only that -- it's the rare film that I can't wait to see again. I've described it by pointing to the famous one-take staircase fight in Tony Jaa's The Protector: It prompts the kind of rush of that scene, only for the entire runtime.
Briefly, the simple premise of The Raid: SWAT agents in Jakarta, Indonesia, descend on an apartment building run by a local crime lord, only to find that the place is infested with criminals and the odds are stacked against them. The action emphasis is on gun battles and a form of martial arts called silat, which Evans previously used in his 2009 film Merantau, and to say the very least, it's a brutal, stabby, bone-crunching kind of action pic.
Pairing Evans' film with a new electro-ish score by Shinoda works extremely well as their energies are well-matched, though I can't say what the original score sounded like. Suffice to say it may be the best thing to come of Linkin…
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