the raid

I'd heard good things about the raid.

Specifically I'd heard it was an entertaining, somewhat old-skool martial arts film, that had loads of great action.

Well it had loads of action, I will give it that, but I have to confess I found a lot of it a bit dull.  No, that's not quite right - it's more that I got rather bored of it.

One of the things I say in quite a lot of my reviews is that they've taken a perfectly good 1hr 30min film and made it 2hr long.  Well, the raid is only 1hr 30min (ish) long, but it felt like it should probably have been 1hr long.

A lot of the fights just drag on, and I know they're brutal and harsh and well filmed and all that, but I just found myself fast-forwarding through them.

A big part of the problem was that I found the whole film ludicrous.  The plot makes no sense whatsoever.  There are also some twists in it, and these just make things confusing and undermine whatever little sense it had.

Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't expecting it to be sensible, it's just that some of the stuff that happens doesn't actually hang together, even within the logic of the film.

I dunno - I guess I'm being harsh again, but I just found it boring.  Maybe if I'd watched it back when I went through that traditional phase most young guys go through of loving all things martial arts (Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, et al) then I'd have liked it more?