APOSTLE (US/UK - 2018) Written and directed by Gareth Evans. Cast: Dan Stevens, Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton, Mark Lewis Jones, Bill Milner, Kristine Froseth, Paul Higgins, Elen Rhys, Sharon Morgan, Sebastian McCheyne, John Weldon, Richard Elfyn, Ross O'Hennessy. (Unrated, 129 mins) Welsh-born writer/director Gareth Evans is best known for his Indonesian action extravaganzas with Iko Uwais (MERENTAU and the two RAID films), but he's explored the horror genre as well with his little-seen 2006 debut FOOTSTEPS and the "Safe Haven" segment of 2013's V/H/S/2. "Safe Haven" was set in the present-day and centered on an Indonesia-based religious cult, a topic Evans explores in a different time and place with his latest film, the Netflix Original APOSTLE. In the early 1900s, Thomas Richardson (Dan Stevens), the black sheep of a wealthy British family, is summoned home after years away by his near-catatonic father's attorney. Presumed dead for reasons the film specifies later and looking perilously close to feral amidst his upper-class surroundings, Thomas' return is an absolute last resort: his younger sister Jennifer (Elen Rhys) has been abducted and whisked away to a distant island, where a religious cult led by the Prophet Malcolm (Michael Sheen) has fled England and established a community called Erisden. She didn't join the cult--she was taken for ransom and they want it delivered personally. Thomas must infiltrate Erisden, blend in, and bring Jennifer home. His doing so ends up costing an innocent man his life when Thomas switches out his marked invitation, indicating that Malcolm and his right-hand men Quinn (Mark Lewis Jones) and Frank (Paul Higgins) have no intention of letting Jennifer or her rescuer off the island alive.
The obvious point of comparison in the early going is the 1973 classic THE WICKER MAN, which was already ripped off by Ben Wheatley with 2011's wildly overpraised KILL LIST. But THE WICKER MAN is just a launch pad for APOSTLE, as Evans has more metaphorically loaded ideas in mind. He doles out just enough details--about Erisden, Malcolm, and especially Thomas--to methodically tighten the screws and drive up the tension (abetted significantly by a nerve-jangling soundtrack that vacillates between folkish instruments and screeching violins). As Malcolm's rebellious (conveyed in a rather facile fashion by her fiery red hair) daughter Andrea (Lucy Boynton) says to Thomas, "Your eyes...they've seen things." But she hasn't seen the scars and burns on his back, part of a backstory that will make things much clearer as the film goes on. Unlike most self-appointed prophets of this sort, Malcolm is initially practical, save for the requirement that the new arrivals on Erisden must leave a small jar of their blood outside their quarters every night. The crops have failed, but Jennifer hasn't been taken to Erisden as a sacrifice to their version of a wicker man, but rather, because they need money and goods brought from the mainland and kidnapping an heiress for a hefty ransom is a last-ditch act of desperation. Malcolm brought his flock to Erisden but reality seems to have given them a swift kick in the ass. This is also represented by the blossoming (and secret) relationship between Frank's son Jeremy (Bill Milner) and Quinn's daughter Ffion (Kristine Froseth), which sets off a chain reaction of tragedy and terror that takes APOSTLE into genuinely horrific, Stephen King-by-way-of-Neil Gaiman territory in the second hour.
To divulge more plot is difficult without going into spoilers, but while it only briefly detours into the bone-crushing action choreography that's synonymous with Evans, APOSTLE is his most conceptually ambitious work yet. That's not just in the unforeseen roads the story travels, but also in its multi-dimensional characters, even finding some sense of morality in the lunacy of Malcolm and his ideas. He's not even the most dangerous person--or thing--on Erisden, which becomes painfully clear to him when things spiral out of his control. There's also a harsh lesson to be learned for those on Erisden who commit heinous acts in the name of their god or their religion. When one character exacts his personal revenge on another, triumphantly declaring "I've wanted this," it's proof positive that Erisden has lost its way and its people are doing things not out of religious conviction but rather, control and power. There are those on Erisden who are complicit in the worst things happening and hide behind their religion, increasingly divorced from what they purport to stand for and believe, thereby offending a god who sees fit to poison the crops and make the land toxic. These notions make parts of APOSTLE a blistering indictment of rampant religious hypocrisy, but despite its grievances, the film is ultimately a spiritual one that falls on the side of faith. Evans also doesn't forget he's making a Gareth Evans joint, coming up with some innovative torture devices and increasingly painful ways for people to be killed, particularly one nightmarish mechanism that serves as a rustic tribute to the legendary drill scene in Lucio Fulci's CITY OF THE LIVING DEAD. And don't be surprised when cosplay versions of "Her" and "The Grinder" start appearing at fan conventions.
THE RAID 2 (US/Indonesia - 2014) Written and directed by Gareth Evans. Cast: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Tio Pakusadewo, Alex Abbad, Kenichi Endo, Ryuhei Matsuda, Julie Estelle, Very Tri Yulisman, Yayan Ruhian, Cecip Arif Rahman, Cok Simbara, Kazuki Kitamura, Roy Marten, Fikha Effendi. (R, 150 mins)
Welsh-born, Indonesia-based writer/director Gareth Evans caught the attention of martial arts fans with his 2009 cult film MERENTAU, his first teaming with Pencak Silat champion Iko Uwais. The duo paired again for their global breakthrough, 2011's THE RAID, a riveting actioner and an instant classic in the "high-rise mayhem" genre, with Uwais as a rookie cop forced to fight his way floor-by-floor through a Jakarta drug lord's apartment-building stronghold. THE RAID earned acclaim worldwide and was released in the US in 2012 as THE RAID: REDEMPTION (even though no one calls it that), becoming a rare subtitled foreign film to break out of the art-house shackles and open wide, and while it didn't exactly tear it up at the box office, it grossed a relatively respectable $4 million for Sony Pictures Classics on its way to becoming a big hit on DVD and Blu-ray. Evans and Uwais are back with THE RAID 2, and let it be said here and now: they are not fucking around.
THE RAID was a perfect, self-contained B-movie but THE RAID 2 is just...bigger. Not only is the action more expansive, but Evans has grown as a filmmaker. THE RAID was a B-movie, but THE RAID 2 is a film. Evans has already proven that he's an expert action choreographer, but THE RAID 2 is on an altogether higher and more advanced level. A few months after the events of the first film (some reviews say it begins a few hours after, but that can't be, since the hero's wife was pregnant in THE RAID and in THE RAID 2, the kid is a few months old), Jakarta cop Rama (Uwais) is talked into going undercover by his anti-corruption task force boss Bunawar (Cok Simbara), who knows police commissioner Reza (Roy Marten) is in cahoots with various crime organizations, but needs proof. Rama's assignment: get arrested, get convicted, and get sentenced to a few months in prison so he can get close to Uco (Arifin Putra), the incarcerated son of mob boss Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo), and work his way into the organization to see just how many cops are involved in Jakarta's criminal underworld. Fearing for the safety of his wife and infant son after bringing down the drug lord in the first film, Rama agrees and goes undercover as Yuda, but "a few months" turns into a two-year prison sentence, during which time he earns Uco's trust by saving his life in an attempted rubout in the yard. Bangun pulls some strings with the police to get Rama/Yuda released and Yuda becomes an enforcer in the Bangun family. Meanwhile, ambitious, duplicitous would-be gangster Bejo (Alex Abbad) wants a bigger piece of the action and decides to shake things up by manipulating Uco and playing the Bangun family against the Goto (Kenichi Endo) organization, a Japanese outfit with whom Bangun has has ten years of peaceful co-existence.
Where THE RAID's action was limited to the claustrophobic confines of an apartment building, THE RAID 2, its inital premise owing more than a slight debt to DONNIE BRASCO, INFERNAL AFFAIRS and THE DEPARTED, allows Evans to make all of Jakarta his bonecrushing playground. The fight scenes are longer, more intricate, and more violent (Evans had to make some cuts to avoid an NC-17), and by opening things up and resisting the ease of making an identical sequel, Evans and Uwais now get to expand their repertoire to include an epic car chase (watch Uwais stuck in a car with four other people, fighting them in the car, while it's being chased), a blood-drenched fight sequence on a subway with a Bejo hired gun called Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), whose weapons of choice should be self-explantory, and a long brawl in a muddy prison yard during a torrential downpour. And those are just some of the exhilarating sights on display: Evans pays obvious tribute to Scorsese throughout, especially in the way he makes two and a half hours fly by, but also to Stanley Kubrick in some of the ornate, expansive interiors. One vast cocktail lounge bears a striking resemblance to the Gold Ballroom in THE SHINING, and the tracking shots and production design in the restaurants and offices have that distinctly cold, antiseptic Kubrick aura. In these scenes, THE RAID 2 is often as stunningly beautiful as Nicolas Winding Refn's divisive Kubrick lovefest ONLY GOD FORGIVES.
But all that aside, fans of THE RAID are seeing THE RAID 2 for the action, and on that front, Evans and Uwais deliver, and then some. Rama/Yuda's late-film, restaurant-kitchen battle with a Bejo assassin (Cecip Arif Rahman) is one of the most jaw-dropping fight sequences ever shot in a film full of unforgettable, innovative set pieces. Except for some sparingly-utilized CGI gore (and not the distracting, over-digitized kind), Evans goes practical and avoids the modern propensity for shaky-cam action and leaning on the crutch of CGI. Of course, it's there, but it's used to subtly, conservatively enhance rather than do all of the heavy lifting. The action is clear and coherent, and the characters and the viewer feel the pain of every blow. Limbs are snapped, faces are shot off, throats are ripped out, people are disemboweled, one poor bastard gets hibachied, and heads scrape along the road as they're held out of a door that flies open during a car chase. THE RAID 2 is gloriously, breathtakingly brutal, an action film for action fans who think they've seen it all, with an insane 40-minute climax that should be required viewing for any director working in the genre. While the set-up and the police corruption angle are nothing new, THE RAID 2 is the kind of balls-out action ass-kicking that fans have been awaiting for a long time. I don't want Evans to come to Hollywood unless it's on his own terms. He's doing just fine on his own in Indonesia. THE RAID established him as a new voice in cinematic action. THE RAID 2 is a masterpiece.
This bigger-budgeted sequel to last year's overrated horror anthology V/H/S is pretty much along the same lines: some memorable and inspired moments mixed with some groaners. Overall, it's slightly more satisfying than its predecessor, attempting to stick with what worked the first time around but not always exhibiting an ability to follow through. YOU'RE NEXT screenwriter Simon Barrett handles the wraparound segment, with a private eye team (Lawrence Michael Levine, Kelsy Abbott) searching for a missing college student and finding his stash of mysterious VHS tapes--Levine checks out the house while Abbott watches the videos. First up is "Phase 1: Clinical Trials," written by Barrett and directed by and starring YOU'RE NEXT helmer Adam Wingard, who gets an experimental camera eye after a car accident and starts seeing ghostly figures lurking around his house. Next is "A Ride in the Park," co-directed by Eduardo Sanchez (THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT), where a guy attaches a camera to his helmet before heading out on a bike trail, only to be bitten by a zombie and end up allowing us a first-person, hand-held view of a zombie outbreak. It's as tired and played out as it sounds. Things pick up--for a while, at least--with "Safe Haven," co-directed by Gareth Huw Evans, who brings the same level of intensity demonstrated by his breakout hit THE RAID: REDEMPTION, as a team of documentary filmmakers get more than they anticipated when they're granted access to a compound to interview the leader of an Indonesian cult called Paradise Gate. It's a slow-burner (and, at nearly 35 minutes, the longest of the stories) and Evans really ratchets up the intensity, but it completely falls apart when it devolves into--yes, you knew it was coming--yet another zombie apocalypse tale. Like any good horror anthology, V/H/S/2 has the sense to finish big, and the highlight is "Slumber Party Alien Abduction," directed by Jason Eisener, who made the unwatchable HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN but contributed one of the stronger segments to another recent horror omnibus, THE ABCs OF DEATH. A teenage girl and her younger brother have some friends over while their parents are away for the weekend, and in between playing increasingly cruel pranks on each other, find themselves under attack by some aggressively violent aliens of the Whitley Strieber variety.
Of course, the wraparound segment reveals a supernatural element to the VHS tapes, but I again ask "Why the VHS angle?" It's just lazy pandering to the hipster horror crowd that has no bearing on the stories. Horror fans have really embraced these things and this one in particular seemed to get a lot of glowing reviews, even from critics outside the insulated horror scene. Wingard and Barrett were among the numerous producers, and call me a party-pooper, but I think you're better off waiting for their very impressive YOU'RE NEXT--one of the year's best films and one that you probably missed in theaters--to hit Blu-ray in a couple of months. (Unrated, 96 mins)
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 (US - 2013)
This "sequel" to the 2010 remake of the 1978 cult classic is really just another remake. The same director (Steven R. Monroe) is onboard and essentially moves the action to Sofia, Bulgaria, and the only real surprise is that Avi Lerner isn't involved (though he does get a special thanks in the closing credits, because he has to be pretty much running Sofia by this point). I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2 follows the same rape/revenge template, with a little more time unfortunately spent on the rape portion than in Monroe's 2010 film. Katie (Jemma Dallender) is a wide-eyed, naïve Midwestern farm girl trying to make it as a NYC model. She answers an ad for a free photo session and rejects the Eastern European-accented photo crew's demands that she pose nude. The next night, one of them, the dim-witted Georgy (Yavar Baharoff) breaks into her apartment, rapes her, and kills her nice-guy super. Georgy calls his brothers--photographer Ivan (Joe Absolom) and Nicolay (Aleksander Aleksiev)--who drug Katie and smuggle her to their hometown of Sofia, where they keep her chained in a basement and spend days raping her, torturing her, and pissing on her. She manages to escape and a sympathetic detective (George Zlatarev) turns her over to Ana (Mary Stockley), who runs a womens shelter. Of course, unbeknownst to the dumb cop, Ana is actually in cahoots with the Bulgarian sickos (I think she's both mother and older sister to Georgy and Nicolay) and takes Katie right back to the torture room where the "father," the hulking Valko (Peter Silverleaf) beats her and violates her with an electric cattle prod before raping her. They dig a hole in the basement and bury her alive, but the brothers are too stupid to realize that the building is over a tunnel, so she manages to escape and plot her revenge, which includes such highlights as slicing flesh open, tearing off nipples, drowning one in a shit-filled toilet, and putting another's testicles in a vise.
Is there a reason for this film to exist? Monroe's 2010 remake was, surprisingly, not bad. While it borrowed liberally from SAW and other torture-porn offshoots, it was well-made, didn't spend nearly as much time on the unpleasant rape sequences as Meir Zarchi's 1978 original, and had a visceral, powerful performance by Sarah Butler as the victim-turned-avenger. Dallender is an incredibly cute young woman who's very charming in the introductory scenes (she looks like a girl-next-door version of Asia Argento) and handles herself well in the brutal (and brutally long) rape segments, but doesn't quite have the chops for the revenge half of the film. She does little more than open her eyes really wide and make exaggerated faces, while quipping things like "Some guys like it tight!" as she cranks the vise on one rapist's nutsack. Boasting a bloated run time of 106 minutes, this is pure B-movie exploitation and a story that shouldn't take more than 80 minutes to tell, but Monroe prolongs the rape sequences so much that it's over an hour into the film before Katie even starts plotting her vengeance, which is really what the I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE crowd wants to see. I went into Monroe's 2010 remake with extraordinarily low expectations and was surprised at how compelling it proved to be at times. That led me to approach this with a "Well, hey, the last one wasn't too bad..." mentality and found it a dull, depressing bore, with obvious foreshadowing (Katie showing her super how to create a foolproof rat trap), tired clichés (a single tear rolling down Ana's cheek as she clutches a doll and blasts an opera record to drown out Katie's screams from below), and bad acting. One of the few things Monroe gets right is the location shooting in Brooklyn in the early scenes (I'm surprised they didn't just use Sofia for that as well; Avi Lerner would have), utilizing some areas that have remained largely unchanged for the last 30 years or so. It's a nice gesture and much appreciated by a fan of scuzzy, old-school NYC like myself, but when that's the best thing one can say about something called I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2, then you really shouldn't have bothered. (Unrated, 106 mins)
Written and directed by Gareth Huw Evans. Cast: Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim, Donny Alamsyah, Ray Sahetapy, Pierre Gruno, Yayan Ruhian. (R, 100 mins)
A young Indonesian Muslim wakes, prays, does morning exercises, and gets ready to go to work. He kisses his very pregnant wife and tells her to rest. He's a police officer, and though he doesn't know it yet, he's embarking on the worst day of his life.
That serene opening sequence is the calmest moment in the explosive, balls-to-the-wall action epic THE RAID: REDEMPTION. Directed by Indonesia-based Welshman Gareth Evans, who made his mark with 2009's cult item MERANTAU, THE RAID: REDEMPTION (the "Redemption" was added by US distributor Sony after THE RAID was already claimed) quickly sets up a story and then it's insanity unleashed. The Muslim cop is Rama (Iko Uwais, one of several MERANTAU stars who also appear here), who's a member of an elite SWAT team dispatched by Lt. Wahyu (Pierre Gruno, who looks like an Indonesian Malcolm McDowell) to raid the 30-story apartment building/stronghold of powerful crime lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy). The cops have long given Tama unspoken clearance to run his operation, which involves a narcotics lab and providing sanctuary for the city's most wanted criminals, in addition to standard slum housing on the lower floors. Rama is a dutiful officer, but questions why now and why today do the cops finally decide to arrest Tama. They quickly secure the lower floors, but a child sees them and pulls the alarm, notifiying Tama, whose bunker is on the 15th floor, that the cops are in the building. Tama dispatches his goons and those from neighboring buildings to get to work. And so begins a day-long, multi-floor battle between cops and criminals, with guns, knives, machetes, hammers, and, when all else fails, fists and feet and whatever else is available, even a propane tank and a refrigerator to make an impromptu bomb.
Iko Uwais as Rama
While the "Best Action Movie in Decades!!!" line that the ads scream is a tad hyperbolic, THE RAID: REDEMPTION is quite a jawdropper. Incredible choreography and fight sequences, expertly-designed and stunningly executed like none you've ever seen before. Before the Silat martial arts skills of Uwait come into play, Evans does a marvelous job of conveying the danger and the claustrophobia of the situation, especially once the SWAT guys find out that Wahyu orchestrated this hit without telling any of his superiors, so no backup is on the way because no one knows they're there. With the constant synth-based score by Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda, the early sequences in the film have the distinct feel of in-his-prime John Carpenter, reversing the frequent Carpenter motif of "evil trying to get in" to "good guys trying to get out." But once Rama finds himself essentially alone, he--with some unexpected help--takes on Tama's men in an endless and breathtaking series of truly inventive fight sequences (of course, some things never change, as the bad guys still attack Rama--how else?--one at a time), Evans really succeeds in establishing himself as a uniquely styled action auteur. I took a look at MERANTAU (currently streaming on Netflix) immediately after seeing this, and it has its share of crazy action sequences, but they come mostly after a talky first hour with a predictable plot. MERANTAU is a slower but solid enough demonstration of his filmmaking talents (before relocating to Jakarta, Evans also made a 2006 British thriller titled FOOTSTEPS, but I haven't seen it) but Evans really makes a statement with THE RAID. He also does a commendable job of using CGI blood in a way that's not cartoonish and distracting. It's there, but it's used more subtly and mixed much more effectively with the Karo syrup for a CGI look that still has the appropriate level of...wetness, if you will. And in a film as blood-drenched as this, that's important, so props to Evans for being one of the few filmmakers today who gets it and uses CGI blood the right way.
Drug lord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) confronted by Lt. Wahyu
(Pierre Gruno as Indonesian Malcolm McDowell)
THE RAID: REDEMPTION is not just a martial-arts movie (it's also an instant classic in the "high-rise mayhem" subgenre), but it's the best martial-arts movie I've seen in quite some time. Maybe not "DECADES!!!" but probably since the CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON-inspired wuxia craze of the early 2000s. If you're a fan of this stuff, it's a virtual impossibility to be disappointed by this.
Original Indonesian poster before Sony
tacked on the REDEMPTION part of the title
