Time Out by David Fear

There are moments when The Raid: Redemption doesn't feel like an action movie so much as pure action itself, delivered in strong, undiluted doses and with the sort of creative one-upmanship capable of rejuvenating a stale, seen-it-all genre.

New York Magazine (Vulture) by Bilge Ebiri

Once the action starts - and it starts very quickly - The Raid is relentless, breathtaking in its sheer propulsive majesty. But it's also shot through with moments of bleak poetry amid the carnage.

Empire by Simon Crook

Remember your first time with Hard Boiled? Die Hard? This is how it's done - a clean, hard, constant hit of adrenalin. If it's not the best action movie of the year, we'll eat a fridge.

IndieWire by Eric Kohn

American action movies are almost entirely defined by cutaways, blaring music cues and grunts. The Raid: Redemption, a hyper-energetic Indonesian martial arts movie, delivers an effective rebuke to that meek norm. Bones break, blood flows and swift, excessively complicated fight choreography puts virtually everything released in North America since "The Bourne Ultimatum" to instant shame.

Christian Science Monitor by Andy Klein

Extraordinary stunt and fight work and nonstop excitement, but a warning to those who are at all squeamish: this may be the most violent movie I've ever seen.

Portland Oregonian by Shawn Levy

This is the sort of film for which the phrase 'movie-movie' was coined -- and coined as a term of highest praise.

Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein

It's exhausting, exhilarating, riveting stuff that fans of high-octane filmmaking should not miss.

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

It offers some of the best Asian martial-arts choreography of recent years and an electric, claustrophobic puzzle-palace atmosphere that'll leave you wrung out and buzzed.

USA Today by Scott Bowles

Unapologetically brutal and unencumbered by much plot, Raid is the year's most turbo-charged film.

Boston Globe by Ty Burr

Poised at the midway point between an ultraviolent video game and a neo-classic dance musical. As midnight-movie mash-ups go, it's pretty amazing.

The A.V. Club by Noel Murray

Gareth Evans' Indonesian martial-arts throwback The Raid: Redemption has a look and feel that resembles the best of '80s cult action movies: half John Carpenter, half John Woo.

Village Voice by Ernest Hardy

Lean, fast-moving, and filled with game-changing fight sequences that have a brutally beautiful (or beautifully brutal) quality, Gareth Evans's Indonesian martial-arts film The Raid: Redemption lives up to its viral hype.

Variety by Robert Koehler

Taking the genre to a higher level of intensity, the Welsh-born Evans continues what he started in previous Indonesia-set actioner "Merantau," but this picture will seal his cult status.

Movieline

There's a sliver of a plot to The Raid, but it's really not worth going over -- when the characters pause to talk, which is rare, it does tend to kill the film's momentum.

Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman

I do wish that Evans were a better storyteller. When he isn't turning mad-dog violence into visual rock & roll, The Raid shreds narrative coherence to ribbons.

Chicago Tribune by Michael Phillips

The Raid is maniacal in its pacing and assault tactics. It's also, absurdly, rated R. Fantastic. I love that a film this gory secured the same Motion Picture Association of America rating as "The King's Speech."

Slant Magazine by Jaime N. Christley

This mostly no-nonsense, floor-by-floor ass-kicking panorama is admirably humble.

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

This film is about violence. All violence. Wall-to-wall violence. Against many of those walls, heads are pounded again and again into a pulpy mass. If I estimated the film has 10 minutes of dialogue, that would be generous.