The Raid

The Raid (Indonesian title Serbuan Maut) is an Indonesian action film by the Welsh director Gareth Evans. It had its world premiere on 8 September 2011 at the Toronto film festival and reached Indonesian cinemas in March 2012. In the USA it was released as The Raid: Redemption, because the distributor Sony Pictures Classics did not obtain the rights to the title The Raid alone. A tactical unit of the Indonesian police carries out a raid on a Jakarta tenement block ruled by a ruthless drug boss and finds itself surrounded by criminals inside. The story takes place in a single residential tower block in a Jakarta slum. The backbone of the film's fighting is the Indonesian pencak silat. The fights were designed by Iko Uwais, who plays the policeman Rama, and Yayan Ruhian, who plays the character Mad Dog. The same pair had already prepared the fights for Evans's previous film Merantau. Evans met Uwais while shooting a documentary about pencak silat. Close combat in the film alternates with gunfire, for which the lead actors underwent military training with the Indonesian unit KOPASKA. The film was made with a budget of around 1.1 million dollars. At the Toronto festival it won the audience award in the Midnight Madness section, and the critic Peter Bradshaw awarded it a full five stars out of five in The Guardian. In 2014 it was followed by the sequel The Raid 2.

Martial arts in this work

Origin

Evans originally prepared a different project, a prison gangster film Berandal with Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian and foreign martial arts stars. He shot a teaser for it, but after about a year and a half he shelved it for lack of money and reworked the idea into a simpler, lower-budget story, from which Serbuan Maut came. Evans met Uwais while shooting a documentary about pencak silat. Uwais was then working as a courier for a telephone company in Jakarta; on the recommendation of Evans's wife the director cast him in Merantau and then in The Raid. It was shot on a Panasonic AF100 camera. About 120 minutes of footage was recorded, which Evans, who was also the film's editor, cut down to roughly 101 minutes. The Indonesian release of the 2014 sequel The Raid 2 eventually received the name Berandal.

Fight choreography

The fight scenes were designed by Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, who had already worked together on Merantau; according to the Indonesian Wikipedia, the director Gareth Evans also contributed ideas to them. Pre-production, including finishing the script and choreography work, took about four months according to English sources, while Indonesian ones give three. The key actors underwent military training with the KOPASKA unit, where they learned to handle weapons and to attack and defend strategically. The firearms in the film were airsoft replicas, with muzzle flashes and shell casings added in post-production. The cast also includes other people with martial arts backgrounds: Joe Taslim, who plays Jaka, is a former judo champion, and Eka Rahmadia of the stunt group Piranha Stunt Team, who plays the character Dagu, trains taekwondo.

People and martial arts

• Gareth EvansDirector
• Iko UwaisFight choreographer· Pencak Silat (real practitioner)
• Yayan RuhianFight choreographer· Pencak Silat (real practitioner)
• Iko UwaisActor — as Rama· Pencak Silat (real practitioner)
• Yayan RuhianActor — as Mad Dog· Pencak Silat (real practitioner)
• Eka RahmadiaStunt coordinator· Taekwondo (real practitioner)

Awards

• Won · Toronto International Film Festival, Midnight Madness People's Choice Award (2011)

Series