Rotten Tomatoes is a movie review web site which is notoriously picky (their ratings total the average from both pro reviewers and amateurs). They usually give high scores to the sort of art films that win Oscars and slam action movies.  For instance, Taken got a 58%.

Yet they gave Raid: Redemption a rating of 85% .

To give that sense of scale, they gave The Bourne Identity a 83%.  And the Bourne movie was mostly a Euro art film, with action elements (not to knock it – I loved it ).

The Raid is straight-up non-stop fighting martial arts movie.

The director was a Welsh Englishman who was hired as a freelance director for a documentary about the Indonesian martial art pencak silat .

He really got into the art and discovered Iko Uwais , who was working as a deliveryman for a phone company.

They made a low budget film called Merantau in 2009, a cult success . He followed up with The Raid: Redemption in 2011, which became a bonafide hit.  If you haven’t seen it yet, you are in for a treat.  The plot is lean and to the point but makes you care enough for Uwais (who is not only a great fighter, but very charismatic and yet vulnerable).

The sequel was so big, they re-did it with a bigger budget as The Raid 2 .

This three-way fight from The Raid: Redemption is completely badass.