YMMV / The Raid

• Awesome Music: Both Fajar Yuskemal-Aria Prayogi's original score and Mike Shinoda-Joe Trapanese's score for the American release qualifies as this. From Shinoda-Trapanese score, the best are probably Hole Drop, Machette Standoff and Drug Lab, going hand-to-hand with brilliant scenes.
• Complete Monster: Tama Riyadi is a Jakartan crime boss known and feared for his cruelty and lack of any emotion except cold glee at his crimes. Introduced executing four hostages with a gun, Tama opts to beat a fifth hostage to death with a hammer just because he can. When a squad of special tactics police officers plan to infiltrate Tama's base of operations, a massive apartment complex, and arrest the criminal, Tama allows the strike to happen just so he can lead the dozens of officers into a trap and slaughter them all. Cutting off their escape routes and ability to call for backup or help, Tama smugly challenges the thugs and crooks in the building to help kill the police in exchange for monetary rewards, only to then betray his allies and have his loyal goons kill any tenants wounded during the firefights with the cops so Tama can loot their bodies and apartments for money. When one of Tama's Co-Dragons, Andi, spares the life of Rama, one of the cops, because they are brothers, Tama responds by viciously torturing Andi and planning to kill him in front of Rama, and as Tama is captured by the officers, he cheerfully brags about the fact that his trap killed at least 18 cops in a single day.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Dagu. He became well-liked among fans for being a Mauve Shirt that survived to the final act and put on an impressive showing in the narcotics lab fight, alongside Rama. Many were dismayed when he was unceremoniously betrayed and murdered by Wahyu.
• Evil Is Cool: Mad Dog. He's like the Indonesian Chuck Norris who turned to the dark side.
• Funny Moments:
  • While there isn't a huge amount of comedy in the film, a few bits of choreography can stand out in a darkly humorous way. From Jaka blasting a mook with three point-blank headshots, to Mad Dog landing several haymakers that send a disoriented Rama collapsing to the floor, Black Comedy abounds.
  • When Mad Dog voluntarily disarms himself and explains his Let's Fight Like Gentlemen mindset to Jaka, the latter has an absolutely hysterical "what loony bin did you escape from?!" look on his face.
• Magnificent Bastard: Rama is a rookie cop participating in the raid on Tama Riyadi to bring his criminal brother Andi home. Upon being trapped, Rama comes up with skilled strategies to hold off the horde of criminals, and allow for himself and other cops to escape before rescuing Andi from Tama's tortures. When Andi is murdered by the crime lord Bejo, Rama goes undercover in the Bangun crime outfit, endearing himself to Bangun's son Uco to steadily gain evidence to bring down the criminals and the corrupt police comissioner Reza. Ultimately choosing his morals, Rama dismantles the entire crime family after Bejo and Uco's coup with his superior fighting skills and brilliant tactical mind, being the last man standing and evidently refusing an offer to join the Goto family in the end to return to his wife and daughter.
• Memetic Badass: Mad Dog. He's like the Indonesian Chuck Norris.
• Moral Event Horizon
  • Tama crosses this in his very first scene by brutally murdering the last of a group of captives he has with a hammer, when he could have just shot him quickly. While murder may be regular business for crime bosses, the fact was that the other victims at least had a quick death (albeit one that they were shitting themselves about) and he intentionally gave his victim a needlessly brutal one, just to inflict even more pain. This is a bit that plays slightly differently in countries where guns are not so common; outside of (for example) America, the entire scene is this for the simple fact that he's executing a bunch of (seemingly innocent) people.
  • The Lieutenant crosses the horizon by shooting one of his fellow officers in order to use Tama as a bargaining chip to survive, and trying to gun down Rama and Andi just because they're nearby.
• Narm:
  • Almost all the dialogues sound pretty narmy for native Indonesian speakers, as the language they use is way too soft and polite for brutal gangsters. To explain for non-Indonesians: never once in the whole movie the harshest Indonesian curses taik ("shit") or ngentot ("fuck") are ever used in the film, which creates a jarring situation where a film with extreme R-rated violence has the dialogue limitations of a prime-time TV show.
  • For older Indonesians, Big Bad Tama's final words may trigger bouts of uncontrollable laughter too, as they amount to a rather childish schoolyard insult common around the 1950s, something also likely to fly over the heads of many younger Indonesians. (Which is probably why it was said by one old guy to another old guy.) It should be noted that in the English subtitles, it was translated as "Fuck you!" or "Asshole!"
  "Kampret lu!" (literally "you bat!", but in proper context meaning something like "you suck.")
• Woolseyism: Because the original Indonesian version had language that is considered too soft for the movie it's in, the English translation's tendency towards harsher language (in both the subtitled and dubbed versions) actually enhances the film.