The Raid: Redemption, aka Beat 'em Up, the Movie

The Raid: Redemption is a film about the hardships of maintaining a relationship and pursuing a career in a highly competitive field.  Through a series of vignettes, mostly set in the homes of the lead protagonists as they balance personal and professional life, the viewer becomes witness to the joys and failures of the ensemble cast, sometimes without a word spoken between characters for several minutes because a simple closeup on their haunted eyes,  or a gentle sigh accomplishes more than words or even action can ever hope to.

Hah, I'm just jerking you around!  Can you imagine the pain I'd go through reviewing a movie as boring and pretentious as that?   No thanks, friend-o.  The Raid is actually a hyperactive martial arts flick from Indonesia.  It's like Saw meets The Warriors meets the 80s Nintendo game "Bad Dudes".  You know, the game that challenged your manhood by asking: "Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?"  Well let me assure you, once the generics/red shirts from Team Law have been wiped out in this movie, you're left with some pretty bad fucking dudes.

But they're not out to save the president in this movie.  Their mission is to go into this high rise building  and arrest an infamous crime boss who sublets the rooms to the scum of society.  By the time the movie starts, the building is chock full of rapists, murderers, drug dealers, music pirates and people who reproduced football games without the express written consent of the NFL.  This makes him the bane of the local homeowners association, so it's time for the cops to lock, load, and take this fucker down to Chinatown...  Or downtown Jakarta, I guess.

The movie starts with some gunfights, but a convenient explosion either messes up the SWAT teams firearms, or they just didnt bring enough ammo.  Either way, the rest of the movie is an exercise in figuring out the most brutal way to kill your enemy with bare hands and melee weapons this side of the Dark Ages.  In true Game of Death style, the battle rages up the building, leaving a trail of bodies to follow in case someone loses their way (I swear we've passed that dead guy already) until a fight with the last boss and some required plot resolution.

With a basically non-existant plot, the fights are what make this movie worth the time.  The main martial art used in the movie is Silat, an Indonesian martial art similar to the Filipino Martial Arts I've studied in that it was designed to kill people at close range, often with knives/bladed weapons and sticks and attacks to areas other Martial arts practitioners are often not cool with.  Hey, we're little island folks; stomping on knee joints, stabbing in the thigh and dragging the blade through as many arteries as possible is how we level the playing field.  Its not all fancy kung foolery on this movie either.  When the opportunity presents itself, the heroes of The Raid arent above pushing their enemies people out windows or giving someone a fire axe to the chest.  There were several moments where I let out that "Ooohhhh!" sound usually reserved for when somebody gets posterized in basketball.

In conclusion, if you are an aficionado of martial arts flicks, action movies, or those old video games where you walk through a city beating up everyone in your path, you'll like The Raid.  And now's the time to check it out if you haven't, because the sequel The Raid: Retaliation comes out soon.  Director Gareth Evans also says he's got a trilogy planned.  I only hope it isnt called The Raid: Revolutions,  because that didn't pan out so well for the Matrix.

Obligatory amazon shilling below!  (I do not condone using the weapons below on anything other than cardboard, brush, or water bottles.  I am not responsible for the actions of dumbasses.  The opinions and views in this blog are not necessarily those of The Halo Equation or Ben Maniquis, even when explicitly stated that they are my views.  Stop reading and watch the damn movie.)

Watch on blu-ray!

Watch with Amazon Instant Video!

Seriously, I don't know why I'm linking the stuff below...  They just
seem loosely related to the movie and the style of Martial Arts.  

Meanwhile, Across the Sea...

So I came short of 50,000 words in this year's nanowrimo, somehow managing to come in about 1,900 words under.  First time in the last three years I didn't clear the 50k mark.  I ain't even mad.  My main problem this year might have been too much research, too much getting caught up in the world-building and not concentrating on pushing through and not looking back.   I suppose I probably could have finished if I hadn't spent a bunch of time putting stuff like this map together:

Then again, that's part of the fun for me.  Coming up with a semi-believable world to explore and hopefully have the readers or audience or whatever explore it too.  This isn't even a final map.  There are rivers to carve, some mountains need to be moved, and a massive forest to cultivate at the foot of those Northern peaks.  Also, Starshadow Bay is a little bit too far north, so some tectonic shifting may be necessary...

See what I mean?  I blame the folks over at the Cartographer's Guild for this sudden fictional geography fixation, even though they don't know who I am, because I only lurk those forums.

NaNoWriRe? (National Novel Writing Research)

Add a copy of the documentary series "Going Medieval" and I'll be ready to rock this November.  I've been working through the "Song of Ice and Fire" series, and George R.R. Martin's fanatical attention to detail has inspired me to be a little less carefree with the anachronisms and actually make a trip to the library to pick up these weird paper rectangles with words written in them.   Most likely won't be as detailed with the food though.  I don't intend to reach the 50k word count on meal description alone.

Since I've already done a ludicrous amount of world-building for my webcomic "An ArrowIn the Moon", this year's novel is going to be set in that same world.  Drawing a full color comic, it turns out, takes a bit of time and there's a whole (fictional) world out there, ripe for exploration but I won't ever get to share with anyone if I want to keep the comic story moving at a reasonable pace.

The books in the picture are: 

Daily Life in the Middle Ages

Life in a Medieval Castle

Medieval Underpants and Other Blunders

Medieval Underpants is probably the best for writers.  Life in a medieval castle feels a little dry, but it's got good info.  Daily life in the Middle Ages is a good quick reference.