The Raid: Redemption
Dir: Gareth Evans
2011
****
I'm not sure The Raid quite lived up to the huge amount of hype surrounding it back in 2011/2012 but I did enjoy it and appreciate its originality. I just thought they could have done more with the story. Back in the day, the idea of one man taking on an army of foot-solders to get to a mob-boss at the top of a tower block would have been produced with Arnie in the lead role and John McTiernan directing, I'm not sure if this version is better than that would have been. I'm not a huge fan of excessive violence in film but the fighting chirography was something else, I was hugely impressed. For me it felt like a mixture of early John Woo (before he went all 'slow motion dove shot' on us) and moody John Carpenter (Think the original Assault on Precinct 13). It's good, but story-wise I preferred Dredd that had a very similar story and was released the same year.