The Raid [Blu-ray]

As soon as I saw the red-band trailer, I knew I had to see this movie, and got tickets for the first ever UK screening at Glasgow FrightFest. It was the last film of the day - so every seat in the cinema was already occupied by film fans and journalists who'd been sitting there all day, watching film after film. We squeezed into the last remaining seats in the back row, expecting the audience to be too tired to respond enthusiastically to a late-night action movie.

We couldn't have been more wrong.

THE RAID got half a dozen spontaneous rounds of applause, and a standing ovation at the end. Well deserved.

I've now seen it four times on the big screen, and bought the DVD on the day of release.

THE RAID, is a smart, lean, tightly-controlled thrill machine, perfectly calibrated to create maximum tension and adrenaline, without any of the dumbed-down compromises we've been conditioned to expect from Hollywood. This is, quite simply, the kind of action movie they just don't make any more. Imagine early-80s John Carpenter tension, fused with mid-80s John Woo Hong Kong action (but without Woo's cheesiness), and you're in the right ballpark. It's fast, dense, gritty, uncompromising, and utterly gripping, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with such action classics as DIE HARD, THE TERMINATOR, ALIENS and HARD BOILED.

Director Gareth Evans is going to be a major force in Hollywood. Get in on the ground floor.

I'm unsure whether I'm reviewing the seller or the film here! So I'll do both...

The seller was spot on. Bluray was in perfect condition and arrived promptly.

I'm a fan of action films but not usually that bothered about films with subtitles or films with martial arts...however...this film had everything! Drama, emotion, suspense, action, horror...there were explosions, guns, knives, machetes and then raw fighting. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and watching the making of the film afterwards just heightened my enjoyment of it. Very entertaining. Would recommend to anyone who enjoys being on the edge of their seat or who doesn't mind a film where everyone is kicking two shades out of each other.

Ok, bold title and a few caveats. The plot is SWAT team tries to get a drug baron in a block of flats...and that's it for plot and locations. The dialogue is in Indonesian so the translation may lose some nuance (but I doubt it) and overall it's every action cliche rolled into one script.

So why the title and 5 stars? Because everything is executed perfectly. The sweaty tension raising intro, the bombastic gunfights and most of all the incredibly brutal, fast and efficient martial arts.

I saw this on a Wednesday evening in a half full cinema- and yet there were spontaneous rounds of applause and cries of "oh god!" as you saw audacious action scene after visceral fistfight. It is a constant thrill with enough "plot" to allow you to recover before the next shot of adrenaline cinema kicks in. It reminds Hollywood it's not about money or how much blows up but how it blows up and two men fighting in a kitchen can be more exciting than watching a city being trashed by giant robots.

A must see for any fan of action movies.