Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 26 February

The Raid (Evans, 2011)

Back in October last year I recom­men­ded the 2012 com­ic book adapt­a­tion Dredd and now, just arrived on AMC+ and Shudder, is an even bet­ter “get to the top of the tower” adven­ture, the Indonesian/Welsh mar­tial arts epic, The Raid.

I reviewed this one when it was released in cinemas back in 2012:

Storming out of – not quite – nowhere, Gareth Evans’ The Raid is a stun­ning example of pure cinema – action, edit­ing, sound design and cho­reo­graphy all har­nessed to a beau­ti­fully simple story that once kicked-off, doesn’t let go. An Indonesian SWAT team are sent to cap­ture a big time – but untouch­able – drug deal­er from his lair at the top of a run-down apart­ment build­ing defen­ded by hordes of expend­able hench­men. Yes, it’s viol­ent but there’s a pur­ity about its expres­sion that makes it quite beau­ti­ful. If you replaced the impact sound effects with music, The Raid becomes intense and power­ful con­tem­por­ary dance.

In addi­tion to just arriv­ing on stream­ing, Umbrella Entertainment recently released a restored 4K UHD DolbyVision edi­tion of The Raid and, if my own UHD play­er hadn’t lit­er­ally blown up a couple of weeks ago, I would be temp­ted to rip the cel­lo­phane off it and give it a spin this com­ing week­end. They also have a spe­cial collector’s edi­tion which fea­tures all the discs plus a lim­ited edi­tion graph­ic nov­el and oth­er tchotchkes.

Also reviewed in that Capital Times piece from May 2012: The Hunger Games (the first one), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (the first one), 21 Jump Street (the first one), The Hunter (Willem Dafoe goes Tasmanian Tiger hunt­ing), and the third in the series of “In search of …” clas­sic­al music doc­u­ment­ar­ies, In Search of Haydn which con­tains one of my favour­ite, gentle, pans:

At the begin­ning of In Search of Haydn, nar­rat­or Juliet Stevenson makes the bold asser­tion that the great com­poser was at least the equal of con­tem­por­ar­ies Mozart and Beethoven. Phil Grabsky’s film – the third in a series of “In Search of” films – then pro­ceeds at some length to fail to make that case. It fea­tures lots of damning with faint praise from the assembled music­al experts – sop­rano Sophie Bevan talks about how easy Haydn arias are to sing but how dif­fi­cult they are to make beau­ti­ful, for example – and the exten­ded examples from the rep­er­toire don’t quite set the heart a‑flutter. The oth­er prob­lem Grabsky fails to wrestle with is the fun­da­ment­ally undra­mat­ic life old Haydn lived – long, pro­duct­ive, suc­cess­ful and happy. Who wants to see that?

Where to watch The Raid

Aotearoa & Australia: Streaming on AMC+/Shudder

Canada, Ireland, India, USA & UK: Digital rental