Raid

Plot synopsis:
Indonesian special tactics officer Rama prays, practices Silat, and bids goodbye to his father and wife, who is pregnant with his child. He cryptically promises his father he'll "bring him home." Rama joins a heavily armed 20-man elite police squad, including officers Bowo and Dagu, Sergeant Jaka, and Lieutenant Wahyu, for a raid on a high-rise apartment block in Jakarta's slums. The team intends to capture crime lord Tama Riyadi, who, along with his two lieutenants Andi and Mad Dog, owns the block letting criminals and junkies around the city rent rooms under his protection. Arriving undetected, the team sweeps the first floors and subdues various criminal tenants; they also temporarily detain an innocent, law-abiding tenant delivering medicine to his sick wife in apartment #726. Continuing undetected to the sixth floor, the team is spotted by a young lookout, who passes on the message to another lookout just before he is shot dead by Lt. Wahyu; the latter youth raises the alarm.
Tama calls reinforcements and the team is brutally attacked. Thugs snipe two officers guarding the perimeter, eliminate two more in the armoured van, and ambush several officers patrolling the first five floors. Cutting the lights, Tama announces over the PA system that the police are trapped on the sixth-floor stairwell, and he will grant free permanent residence to those who kill the intruders. In the darkness, the remaining team members are ambushed by shooters from above, and almost completely wiped out. Prior to the gunfight, Lt. Wahyu confesses to Jaka he staged the mission so he can eliminate Tama, who's in league with corrupt police officials, including himself. The mission is not officially sanctioned by the police command; nobody at HQ knows their location and thus there is no hope for reinforcements.
The remaining officers retreat to an empty apartment as they are cornered by more armed thugs. To create an escape route, Rama uses an axe to cut a hole in the wooden floor so the team can descend to the lower level. Dropping to the room below, the team struggles to fend off Tama's horde of thugs and Officer Bowo is critically injured in the process. In a last-ditch effort to defend his team, Rama uses a stove propane tank to construct an improvised explosive device that successfully eliminates the invading henchmen, giving the officers a small window of time. Out of ammunition, and with more of Tama's reinforcements approaching, the team splits into two groups: Jaka, Dagu and Lt. Wahyu retreat to the fifth floor, while Rama and a critically injured Bowo ascend back above in search of the law-abiding tenant they encountered earlier.
Fighting through a handful of goons on their way to apartment #726, Rama and Bowo plead with the tenant for help; despite his sick wife's protest, Gofar reluctantly hides the officers in his apartment. Four machete-wielding thugs arrive and ransack the man's apartment. The leader, noticing a refurbished wall, begins stabbing it but fail to find Rama and Bowo. After tending to Bowo's wounds, Rama leaves him with the couple while he searches for Jaka's group. On the eight floor, he crosses paths with the machete gang but manages to defeat the group, including their leader, whom he uses to smash through a window and cushion a three story plummet onto a fire escape below. Exhausted, he makes his way to the sixth floor before being unexpectedly grabbed by Andi, who had just murdered two of Tama's men in the elevator. Andi is revealed to be his estranged brother, and Rama signed up for the mission to search for him at the urging of their father. Rama refuses to leave the building without his comrades, and Andi refuses to abandon his auspicious criminal life, "Just because you see what I do as wrong doesn't mean I can't be good at it." Rama reluctantly accepts and parts to search for his surviving team members.
Meanwhile, Mad Dog and a squad of his thugs discover where Jaka and his group are hiding. A brief scuffle ensues which ends up splitting the team even further; the thugs pursue Lt. Wahyu and Dagu, while Jaka is left at Mad Dog's gunpoint. Instead of shooting him, Mad Dog challenges Jaka to a hand-to-hand fight which he ultimately wins and proceeds to snap Jaka's neck, killing him. Mad Dog meets up with Andi to report back to Tama in the surveillance room. Tama, having learned of Andi's treachery, incapacitates Andi and hands him over to Mad Dog for torture and execution. Rama regroups with Dagu and Lt. Wahyu, who go on to fight through a narcotics lab, as they head for Tama on the 15th floor. Along the way, Rama discovers the room where Mad Dog is torturing Andi, causing him to separate from Dagu and Wahyu. Mad Dog lets Rama free Andi, and fights both brothers. Mad Dog initially has the upper hand, but the brothers prove to be a match when working together. Following an intense and grueling battle, Rama kills Mad Dog with Andi's help.
Meanwhile, Lt. Wahyu and Dagu confront Tama after killing off his remaining henchman. However, Lt. Wahyu ends up betraying Dagu by shooting him dead before taking Tama hostage, intending to use him as a shield to escape. When the duo encounter Rama and Andi as they're leaving the building, Tama taunts Lt. Wahyu by revealing that he had already been waiting for them before the raid began and Lt. Wahyu was set-up by his corrupt higher-ups; indicating that he will be killed regardless of escaping. In despair, Lt. Wahyu kills Tama and attempts suicide, only to find he has no ammunition left.
Andi uses his influence over the tenants to allow Rama to leave with the injured Bowo and a detained Lt. Wahyu. The tenant who protected Bowo watches from a window grinning with relief. Andi also hands over numerous blackmail recordings Tama made of corrupt officials taking bribes, hoping Rama can use them to his benefit. Rama asks Andi to come home, but Andi refuses due to his acclimation to his criminal lifestyle. Andi asserts he can protect Rama in his role as a gang lord, but that Rama can't do the same for him. As he turns around and walks back to the apartment block with a grin, Rama, along with Lt. Wahyu and an injured Bowo, exits to an uncertain future.

Tags: violence, murder

Review:
Finland's own action hero.
Raid (the superb Kai Lehtinen) returns to Finland to find his ex-girlfriend Tarja (Mari Rantasila) only to hear that she has been killed in an arson made on the public voice press headquarters.
Grieving, Raid begins his own investigation of what happened.
Meanwhile Captain Jansson (Oiva Lohtander)of the Finnish police is investigating the murder of a protester during the world bank meeting held in Helsinki.
Soon he realizes that all clues might be pointing into the wrong direction and with his friends, officers Huusko (Pekka Huotari) and Susisaari (Kirsti Väänänen) begin to take a closer look into the investigation.
In the background spins a conspiracy and a strange charecter known as the legioner, but what do all these have to do with the same magazine as the one that Tarja worked for?While Finland hasn't had a chance to boast with great movies until now with "The Man Without A Past" there still have been numerous great movies that have been made here.
Considering that money is limited for movies, most have been small budget comedies and drama movies, but finally Finland can say that they have their own action hero.
Kai Lehtinen is superb as the quiet Raid and Oiva Lohtander does a fabulous role as the sarcastic Jansson.
While the movie has moments of slight clichés such as the Legioner, the whole movie fixes them and allows the movie really to shine.
An excellent action movie with a decent plot that allows the audience really to connect with the characters, these are real people not super heroes.4.5/5.
More powerful, but less believable than the miniseries.
In June of 2005, the Finnish embassy and the MHz channel arranged a special showing of the RAID sequel at the AFI Silver, just outside Washington DC.
We stood in line surrounded by enthusiastic Finnish-Americans.
Kai Lehtinen and Tapio Piirainen had flown in, signed autographs and posed for snapshots with fans.The film delivered most of our favorite characters in another involved political conspiracy with economic consequences.
Running gags from the series were continued in the film.
It was hard to judge if the film was funnier than the series, or if the enthusiastic crowd made it seem more humorous.
The events in the series were fictional, but believable.
Raid was still the talented and instinctive hero, and Uki, Tarja, Jansson and Sundman were still very believable characters; the actions they took were plausible enough to suspend disbelief.
Sundman's relationship with a plump model was intriguing.This film was more action-packed, but it was more difficult to believe that the climactic events could have occurred without serious repercussions for Raid and his cohort.
And the film's villain wasn't as memorable as Hammar.After the showing, Lehtinen laughed a lot while he and Piirainen fielded questions from the stage.
Kai seemed very surprised and flattered to be a hit in America, but was grounded enough to brush off any talk of leaving Finland to pursue a Hollywood career..
Todays Helsinki with strong cyberpunk feeling..
Raid was very popular tv-serie in Finland couple of years ago.
It was a good story of dirty political deals including many human casualties.
There were two kind of main characters.
Polices and villains.
Police leading characters investigate a case that was too hot to handle.
Even they own superiors constantly try to brake the investigations and many finish leading politics were involved.
At the same time professional hitman called Raid try to investigate the same thing for his own reasons.
These both sides had very different working ways, but they had a mutual goal, so policemen try to look in a different way as much as they can when Raid handle a situation his way.Movie Raid is a sequel to this tv-serie.
Like tv-serie it is very comical and it has superior dialogs and absolutely not any boring characters.Film is very good and surely worth of watching.
There was a certain feeling that too many original tv-serie characters was put in the movie just because they are fun comical sidekicks, but that is the most common problem of all sequels..
Wish There Would Have Been More.
I had loved the 2000 series and didn't even know that this sequel existed until reading the blurb on the brand new 1st English translation of a Raid novel Raid and the Blackest of Sheep.
(Thank you, Ice Cold Crime!!!!!) I immediately launched on an internet search and managed to get a copy.
I found it simply wonderful - all the more so after having read the cited novel.Unlike my fellow reviewer above, I really appreciated the inclusion of so many characters from the series (Sunderman, the Cowboy, et al.) OK.
The Cowboy was there as a reference point only, but the series was so good that I appreciated every link between the two.
The plot is complex and, yes, at times a little implausible, but it is also not to be taken entirely seriously.
There is much of what I have come to learn from having watched all of Aki Kaurismaki's oeuvre is Suomi humor.The acting was great.
The characters stayed in character.
The music, which echoed that of the series, was great.
There are many scenes where the countryside of Finland looks much more beautiful than it did in the series - almost to the extent that I wonder if people had kvetched about the series giving the country a bad name.I will be watching my DVDs of both the series and this film many times over the coming years and if you get them on DVD so will you..
Robbers and Cops fight the system.
The plot of Raid continues the one of the earlier TV-series: the system (politicians and corporate world) is corrupted, and the "little people" have to find alternative ways to deal with the situation.The movie is strangely professionally done for a Finnish one.
All the characters have appropriate actors, who are able to add some depth into their performance from the TV-series.
However, as a stand-alone movie this could be a little hard to follow specially in the beginning, since the "sequel-feeling" is quite strong..
Finnish crime movie- works OK.
Raid is back in town.He finds out his girlfriend Tarja is dead.Acting work in this movie is great.Kai Lehtinen is our leading man, who doesn't talk a lot but acts much more.Oiva Lohtander as Jansson is brilliant.Juha Muje makes his drunken Sundman a tragicomic character.Mari Rantasila plays Tarja.Then there are some Finnish movie veterans.Helge Herala plays Emperor-Tarja's father, and even on the hospital bed he does a great job.Sakari Jurkka is Jansson's father, and the same thing goes with him as with Herala.It has a couple nice action scenes, but that's all.Overall, an OK movie, but nothing groundbreaking..
Excellent, humorous film.
I really enjoyed watching this movie, though finnish film production seldom makes me enjoy its fruits.
Last days I have been surprised by some great pieces of finnish film industry, this is definitely one of them.
Great acting, especially Oiva Lohtander's role as inspector Jansson made me laugh.
I really recommend this to every film freak on earth.
Worth seeing!.
(minor spoiler)Funny actionmovie in the line of "Last Action Hero".
This movie has a nice sense of humour.
The hero, Raid, is a renegade adventurer who is surrounded by all kinds of funny sidekicks.
Like "Last Action Hero" it exaggerates the macho of the hero, to the point where you can´t help but to laugh.
Also the villains are pure evil and totally depraved of feelings.
But unlike "LAH", the hero doesn´t try or even want to get in touch with his softer side.
The intrigue of the movie is that an political activist gets killed by the police during a demonstration.
The story then spins about Raid all the way up to an international money laundry operation which includes a surprising actor...