August 5: #44, The Raid: Redemption
“There’ll be no empty
seats in here on the way home.”
Sorry, proud Amurricans, but the United States has not had a
firm grip on the martial arts epic since Jean-Claude Van Damme was put out to
pasture and relegated to direct-to-video status. Even then, in the 80s and 90s,
our action heroes were largely big, slow, and preferred guns to kicks.
Nowadays, we don’t really have action stars at all, besides perhaps The Rock.
They just take a decent actor or actress and give them six months of kickboxing
classes, instead. A shame, really.
Fortunately, Indonesia has not given up on the art of
ass-kicking, and not only are we getting great martial arts films from the
East, still (Ong Bak wasn’t that long ago), but now they’re out
action-ing our own action films, to boot. Yes, I just made that word up.
I’m not going to lie to you: The Raid: Redemption is
almost entirely a balls-to-the-wall action film. I mean, probably the most
dynamic action film you’ve ever seen, and that includes my beloved Ong Bak. However, even though some of
you will be relieved that you’ll only be reading subtitles occasionally, others
of you should not forego this film simply because it’s the best action film in
years. That’s because The Raid:
Redemption, despite its dumbass, generic subtitle, is not simply a great
action film, but has a fairly interesting plot and some quality drama to offer,
as well.
Nobody is expected to be Laurence Olivier here, but everyone
is great in their roles. From the beginning, we are invited into the headspace
of a young rookie policeman who (of course) is going to be a father for the
first time soon. You know, because we wouldn’t give a shit about his safety if
he wasn’t procreating. The rookie, Rama (Iko Uwais), is going along on an
incredibly dangerous raid on a 14-story apartment complex in a bad neighborhood
that is home to druggies, thugs, criminals of all sorts, and the local kingpin,
who resides at the top and is nearly impossible to get to in the most literal
sense of the phrase.
There’s a great scene right at the beginning where all of
the troops are loaded up in an armored vehicle and the tension is high as they
prepare for what will be the most dangerous mission they’ve ever been on. Then,
just 9 ½ minutes in, they’re rushing into the ground floor of the building, and
we’re off to the races. Still, in the occasional moments of dialogue, a couple
of intriguing plot points are pushed, with one being about the shady reason
they’re even raiding the building (and the reason they can’t get backup when
they need it) and another being a surprisingly effective story of estranged
brothers.
That’s fine, but again, The
Raid is all about action, and it’s here, from some of the
best-choreographed martial arts sequences I’ve ever seen to gunfights that are
simply crazy and everything in between. This film is an absolute orgy of
violence, and it’s even free of the abomination that is “shaky cam”, thanks to
director Gareth Evans. Evans skillfully directs the film’s thrilling
set-pieces, such as when, trapped in a corner, some officers cut a hole through
the floor to go to the apartment below and drop down, with the camera dropping
down after them and immediately following the fight that takes place directly
when the officers land on their feet.
The film is actually pretty exhausting once it’s all said
and done, both because of the number of “Holy shit!” moments and the absolutely
bleak cinematography. Everything is dark, with plenty of grays, dark blues, and
blacks really underscoring the hopelessness of the task that the officers have
undertaken. Yeah, you’ll be spent when you get done watching The Raid, but then you’ll probably also
be forcing your friends who haven’t seen it to watch it with you, too. Grade: A
August 6: #45, Pitch Perfect
Finally, a capella groups get their Bring it On
Pitch Perfect takes the Glee/a
capella singing group/musical mash-up phenomenon and turns it on its ear pretty
skillfully, simultaneously parodying Glee
and the like while showing genuine affection to its musical roots, which is
not an easy line to walk. So it gets points right off the bat, there.
And hey, it’s pretty damn funny at times! The story follows
Anna Kendrick as Beca, a new college student who has no friends and is being
forced by her inexplicably dickish father to join an extracurricular activity,
even though she’d rather make awful club music on her laptop and keep to
herself. Along the way, she joins an a capella group called The Barden Bellas,
who are a team that has only two remaining members and must recruit heavily to
survive, even as they stubbornly refuse to change their boring arrangements in
order to get to the next level.
Barden University has several a capella groups, in fact,
including an all-male group, The Treble Makers. The two groups have a rivalry,
which gives the movie a third of its conflict, with The Bellas’ leader Aubrey
(Anna Camp)’s stubborn refusal to change the group’s direction and Beca’s own
intimacy issues (yes, really) comprising the other two-thirds.
So it mostly works, although put me down as having zero
investment in Beca and Jesse (Skylar Astin)’s will-they-or-won’t-they love
affair. The other two-thirds of the plot is entertaining, with the rivalry
between The Bellas and The Treble Makers being the best part of the movie. A
lot of that is owed to Adam DeVine (Workaholics),
who is the leader of the boys’ group and absolutely steals every single scene
he’s in. The majority of the other laughs come from Rebel Wilson, who plays Fat
Amy and is actually given fairly bland material to work with but still makes
the best of it and gets some laughs along the way.
The problem is that sometimes the movie is a parody, and
then it goes about 10 minutes while taking itself extremely seriously all of a
sudden. Beca inexplicably goes psycho on Jesse to create a romantic
comedy-style forced conflict, and the momentum of the film gets derailed
completely, and so on. The movie seems to take itself seriously at times, but
Wilson and DeVine completely undermine their groups’ performances at time for
laughs (which I enjoyed), too. Then there are the supporting characters of The
Bellas, who are all completely stereotyped, one-dimensional characters, such as
the Asian Girl Who Doesn’t Speak Loudly Enough To Be Heard.
Still, Pitch Perfect is
legitimately funny at times, and I actually liked a lot of the musical
arrangements better than what I overheard while my wife was binge-watching
every season of Glee in the living
room a couple of years ago (they simply have more energy). Plus, I was all set
to give this a C+ until I realized that against all odds, I was actually
invested in the outcome of the film and got that “feel good” vibe that you
always get in these corny underdog stories. It was kind of a missed
opportunity, but I’ll still be interested in seeing the sequel. Grade: B-
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