4.10 - THE RAID (2011) and the Visceral

In our last episode of this mini-season, we have reached the end of our focus on the Martial Arts genre, with 2011’s THE RAID. After some perhaps surprising reviews, we talk about how who/where we are in life has a huge effect on our reception of the films we watch, as well as some discussions of cinematic violence and consequences.

Next Time Our next mini-season is vampire films, and we kick off with 1922’s seminal NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF HORROR. (It’s not the first vampire film, but it is the earliest ‘mainstream’ hit...and the first we could readily get hold of, for viewing purposes!)

Recent Media
WASHINGTON BLACK (2018): Esi Edugyan
MEGA TIME SQUAD (2018): Tim van Dammen, Morgan Albrecht, Yoson An

Recommendations THE NIGHT COMES FOR US (2018): Timo Tjahjanto, Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim
DREDD (2012): Pete Travis, John Wagner, Karl Urban
STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS (2015): J.J. Abrams, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill
OLDBOY (2003): Park Chan-wook, Garon Tsuchiya, Choi Min-sik

Footnotes Firstly, the Marlon James interview with Adam Buxton is here: (Marlon’s thoughts on filmed violence are towards the end, but the whole interview is an excellent listen). Here’s a reminder of that Jackie Chan video referred to in our DRUNKEN MASTER episode, and again today. This is worth reading, thinking about the idea of cinematic claustrophobia — as Rob mentions when talking about the way this film is shot. We also talked about the idea of the underdog — a through-line which you can see from a character like Jirokichi, nearly a hundred years ago, to Rama; you can read a lot more here
Finally, in a good place to end our focus on the Martial Arts genre, here’s a good summary article (including some films we’ve covered, and some we haven’t been able to).