Review: The Raid - Running time: 110mins; Certificate: 18**** (From York Press)

Review: The Raid - Running time: 110mins; Certificate: 18****

12:27pm Friday 18th May 2012 in Film news and reviews

MORNING has broken. Young cop Rama (Kio Uwals) exercises, says a prayer, kisses his wife goodbye and goes to work. But this won’t be just another day at the office in a movie from Welsh writer-director Gareth Evans that neatly combines martial arts with a tense action thriller.

This isn’t your genteel martial arts, but bone-crunching, flesh-tearing, limb-hacking action that literally pulls no punches.

Rama is part of a police team charged with infiltrating a 15-storey apartment block, housing the Indonesian city’s low lifes with the Mr Big, drug lord Tama and his sadistic henchmen ensconced on the top floor.

Once inside, the cops realise it’s a trap. Most are wiped out within a few minutes as Tama locks down the building and says “I’ll call the neighbours”. They come armed to the teeth with knives, machetes and axes with Tama controlling everything through the CCTV he’s installed throughout the building.

Pretty soon only Rama and a few others are left, faced with fighting their way out of the building. Soon the corridors are piled high with the dead and injured.

Rama, whose fighting skills make Bruce Lee look like Charles Hawtrey, is left to face up to the drug lord and his two bodyguards, one of whom is described as “a maniac of fists and feet who would tear down walls for his boss”.

Evans orchestrates the no-holds-barred fighting with considerable skill, upping the tension as the siege continues and springing a fresh surprise around every corner.