10 Best CG-Free Martial Arts Movies

4. The Raid: Redemption

With the sequel currently storming into cinemas, this list wouldn't be complete without a mention of the original, Gareth Evans' ultra-violent, claustrophobic exercise in bone-crunching excess starring Indonesian Iko Uwais. Few movies have delivered quite the same level of wall-to-wall action as The Raid: Redemption. If A Touch of Zen and other wuxia movies fit their action onto a grand canvas, while others tend to shoehorn the action into predictable plots invariably revolving around revenge, Evans decided to par things down to the bone, stripping away even the basics of plot and characterisation and replacing it with a narrative designed solely for the purpose of delivering the next bout of combat. And boy does it work - freed from the constraints of storytelling beyond the basic premise in which an elite police squad works their way up from the ground floor of an apartment block to take out the criminal in the penthouse, what audiences get is 90 minutes of some of the most visceral, dynamic hand-to-hand fight scenes ever committed to film (with a few machetes thrown in for good measure). The Raid: Redemption almost feels like a movie from another era, harking back to the golden age of kung fu movies of the 70s and 80s, where the cast and crew would spend months rehearsing and filming elaborate, intricate action scenes. An American remake is rumoured to be in the pipeline, although fans of the original won't be holding their breaths in anticipation for a superior version.