There is something about someone smashing a nasty man's face into a wall a few times very quickly that is entertaining for me. It's sick I know. In fact, I relish violent martial arts choreography much like other people relish puppies and good weather in October. I like to see how devastating martial arts can be outside of the safe environment of professional sports and Jackie Chan films. I like to pretend that if I was attacked by a group of mentalists who wanted to kill me I could tear them apart like a dog who has just found a hand written draft of a 10,000 word dissertation. I can't do that obviously but to see someone else doing just that engages my vicarious pleasure nodes and I go into this dark place where I should probably be left well alone. The Raid is like porn in that aspect. Just as porn is an onslaught of sexual information that overloads you with erotic (supposedly) information to stimulate your ugly bits, The Raid is an onslaught of violent ingenuity that arouses the part of your mind that likes to believe that your are hard, even though science and your whole life says otherwise. So back to face smashing. Well there is one shot where Iko Uwais smashes this dudes head down a wall like a bouncy ball and I just bloody love it. It's not that I am a bad person, I don't actually hurt people. But then, horror fans don't stab people (usually) and romance fans don't have unrealistic expectations about relationships............oh wait. The thing is, pretty much every martial arts move ever invented has been used in a fight scene, plus a ton of weird made up ones as well. The only way to be original nowadays is to present it in a way that is uncommon. In the case of The Raid, the answer to that particular issue is brutality. The film is an unflinchingly violent movie but in a way that doesn't so much exploit the violence but use it to tell the story. The story is so simple that the trailer effectively gives it to you in 10 seconds. What makes it work however is the fact that it is a completely terrifying scenario. It's basically a horror movie, with a group of people trying desperately to survive in an extremely hostile environment where one misstep spells certain doom. The only difference is, unlike horror films, our heroes are somewhat equipped to deal with the situation, being hard as nails and all. Still, by the time Rama is on his tod fighting to survive, you start to seriously question whether he will see his beautiful pregnant wife again..... So the ultra violence helps to tell this brutal tale and thankfully that means we get to see Iko Uwais, a real life pencak silat expert, demolish a whole load of what I can only assume are the Indonesian equivalent of chavs with a tonfa and a combat knife. It is a glorious thing to behold. You can almost feel the whip like strikes of the tonfa and you will see the bloody wounds left by the knife. I'm assuming the wounds are very good CGI, otherwise the practical effects department are legends. Either way it is horrifically realistic. This is added to by the manic style of Iko Uwais, who is an ever moving death machine. Silat uses constant movement as a way to distract a foe, and while it might look like a lot of flapping arms, you soon realise that once you enter that danger zone you are lucky to come back alive.