IN a flat in an Indonesian city, Rama (Uko Iwais) wakes before sunrise, does a strenuous workout, kisses his pregnant wife’s belly, says goodbye to his unborn son, then goes to work.

Those are the only calm moments in Gareth Evans’ super-violent actioner as Rama leads his SWAT team into the high-rise apartment building where landlord Tama (Ray Sahetapy) keeps a gang of toughs to operate his narcotics business and protect it from police intrusions.

“The Raid” is uncompromisingly violent. Cops and crooks using machetes, rifles, handguns, fists and feet do battle among the building’s rooms and corridors with admirable energy, delivering images conveying blood, pain, death.

The film’s minimal plot is repressed until everybody’s dead except for Rama, his brother and a senior cop who unexpectedly joins the team as it arrives at the building. Offsetting that shortcoming, Evans’ choreography of high-speed combats and directing their filming is impressive

Some of the one-on-one combats are less than convincing, more like prize-fights than mortal combat, arms furiously delivering windmill blows against arms. That’s what the public wants to see, I guess. Opportunities to end it sooner by intercepting a kick and delivering the coup de grace to a man thrown face-down to the ground come and go despite no referee being on hand to call a foul.

At Dendy