Nikita (Ivan Kotik) was a Russian soldier, a sniper in fact, who was very successful at his job until one day it became personal. In his past was a nightmare, where his father had been murdered before his eyes by a powerful gang lord, powerful both physically and influentially, and on that day, there this man was in his sights. He could not resist taking a shot, but his colleague pushed him as he did so to stop him ruining the mission and he only grazed the villain, resulting in an explosive retaliation which killed his fellow soldier and saw him leave the army. But now he has been recruited by a young businessman who wishes to stage a radical takeover bid, using a team of fighters who will get him into the target's lair quickly, efficiently, and without anyone getting killed...
Well, some hope of that, in a film that may put some off purely because of the title. Gareth Evans' East Asian action movie The Raid had been lauded in so many places that even a convoluted, but still action-packed, sequel did not dent its reputation, so the idea of a bunch of Russians even so much as remaking it so soon after the original may sound like an insult. Yet if you could get over that stumbling block and merely appreciated the sight of a gang of utter bastards beating the shit out of a different gang of utter bastards who in the main gave as good as they got, then you would be well-served by debuting director Denis Kryuchkov and his cast doing precisely that, using all the MMA moves they could muster to render this realistic at least as far as the combat proceeded.
Assuming you could believe Russian gangsters eschew the use of guns in favour of their fists wherever possible, that was, but what action flick was not a fantasy of extravagant violence on some level, after all? This assembled a cast of MMA bruisers who looked as if they would be more at home in the ring surrounded by a baying crowd and set them on one another, steadily escalating the mayhem until they evidently thought, ah, nobody's going to swallow the lack of guns by now, and added a finale where we were given a computer game first person shooter-style of conclusion, though there was the expected "hero and villain put their firearms aside for a bout of hand to hand" once it was clear they were the last men standing, just about anyway. So you could acknowledge they were not completely above any clichés here.
That said, this was part of the entertainment factor, and no matter that it appeared as if Kryuchkov was being about as derivative as it was possible to be without actually creating a complete facsimile of Evans' efforts, it was the familiarity of the premise presented with slightly different twists, more Russian specific that was, you had to admit unless you were up in arms at the concept and refused to give it the time of day, that he had done a highly impressive job. It's unknown whether this was regarded as a sincere tribute by the makers of The Raid or whether they were on the phone to their lawyers the nanosecond they heard of this impostor, and the diehard fans who put it on such a pedestal would doubtless have their noses put out of joint (though not by a boot to the head), but if you were not so precious about the source and simply wished to see an hour and three quarters of brain turned off, organised chaos where the plot barely mattered, these cheeky Russians both enhanced their filmmakers' reputations as hardmen and were oddly playful with it. Better than it had any right to be, then.
[Eureka release this on Blu-ray; it is also available on digital.]
