Chaos Reigns in Trailer for 'The Raid'!

On Friday I received a number of tweets raving about this action movie called The Raid,which premiered the other day at the Toronto International Film Festival. Tweets like "#TheRaid rules like fucking lords. Violent as all hell and packed all the fllors with bloody action. Fucking good time" (from @Mack_Twitch), "#theRaid has more bone crunching, tile crushing, hole jumping, window crashing building seige action than you can handle" (@Twitchfilm) and my favourite: "Remember the hallway scene in Old Boy, or the fight up the ramp in The Protector? That's The Raid for 90 fucking minutes" (@AntonSirius). The hallway seen in Oldboy and the ramp scene in The Protector are 2 of the best-filmed action scenes I have ever seen, so needless to say those tweets had me keen as mustard! Well, the trailer has just been released and it does not disappoint. Check it after the jump, and the poster, and, for good measure, those aforementioned shots from Oldboy and The Protector.

Official Synopsis:

In the heart of Jakarta lies a rundown apartment infested with druggies and drifters. It’s ruled by a ruthless drug lord who uses the tenement to shelter his junkie customers, pushers, enforcers and brutal killers. The apartment block is considered untouchable by even the bravest of police—until one early morning when, cloaked under dawn’s darkness, an elite SWAT team, led by officer Rama (Uwais), raids the peril-filled structure.  As Rama’s squad races between the maze of rooms and floors, encountering a barrage of gunfire, machetes, and ruthless hand-to-hand combat around every corner, the stakes get higher and higher building to an explosive crescendo and an ultimate battle.

  

Oldboy Hallway Fight Scene

All done in one take!!

The Protector Multi-Story Fight Scene

The most insane steadicam shot ever! Read the following excerpt from an interview with the steadicam operator who filmed this (via steadishots):

"This was done in an abandoned building site, the whole structure, with the stairs was like this. Of course it was all dressed as it was supposed to be an exclusive nightclub.

All the stunts are real, the main actor is incredible, like elastic and can do every asian fighting style. The guy that is thrown out from the second floor fell on a air cushion that was wheeled in after the guy from the first floor was thrown in the little temple down the hall. This was a major operation, the cushion, around 8x8 meters and 2 meters high -had to be wheeled out again for the final top-shot at the 3rd floor.

When I did the rehearsal, I tried to be closer to him, which resulted in one stuntman that crashed right into my rig (bent monitor support) halfway the shot, but i managed to go on till the end. However, I was not able to do it within the 4 minutes for the full roll..... Mind you, it was high summer and about 36-38 Celsius and no airconditioning in his building!

The shot was done on an Arri3, with the 10mm zeiss. What you see here is the TV version, it was widescreen to begin with. In widescreen it would be frequently too wide, in my opinion, but for TV it holds really well.

The second try-out with my colleague Somsak took one day of rehearsing again and the next day they shot it-- in 1 take !!!!

Amazing! "