Trivia / The Raid

• Cast the Expert:
  • Joe Taslim (Jaka) is a Judo champion, having won medals in both national and international competitions, and is also trained in silat, wushu, karate and other arts.
  • Iko Uwais (Rama) and Yayan Ruhian (Mad Dog) are both accomplished Silat practitioners. Iko has won awards at national silat competitions, and Yayan was once the trainer for Paspampres (Indonesian Presidential Security Forces) and was an instructor at a silat school. The two of them choreographed the movie.
• Dyeing for Your Art: Actors that make up the key members of the SWAT team were sent to an Indonesian Special Forces boot camp to learn to behave like real soldiers.
• Executive Meddling: The main reason why the score was replaced for the international release and why the American release got the unwieldy and spoiler-heavy subtitle "Redemption".
• Follow the Leader: Two years after the film's release were enough for an American knockoff titled Extraction to be released, starring Jon Foo of the maligned Tekken (2010) fame.
• No Stunt Double: The majority of the stunts were done by the actors themselves. It also helps, of course, that the cast is composed by high-level martial artists. (On the other hand, the Machete Gang's leader is an architect in real life, which makes it certainly much more amazing.)
• Promoted Fanboy: Taslim applied to the film after becoming a fan of Gareth and Iko's earlier movie, Merantau.
• Star-Making Role: The movie propelled Iko Uwais, Joe Taslim and Yayan Ruhian's stunt-acting career into Hollywood.
• Troubled Production:
  • During the auditions, Uwais got injured while sparring with Alfridus Godfred (the guy who would end up playing the machete guy), as Godfred unexpectedly threw him to the ground fully hard, wrecking Iko's knee bad enough to have him four weeks out. Then, come the first day of shooting, Uwais twisted his foot in the scene in which Rama carries Bowo and re-injured his knee all over again. As if this wasn't enough, he also suffered chicken pox around the same time.
  • In the scene when Rama stabs a thug in the face, a miscommunication caused the latter's actor to get stabbed for real in the cheekbone despite it being a prop knife. However, the actor playing the thug that breaks his back over the wall had it much worse: a chain accident caused him to hit the back of his head hard on the wall and then fall five meters down onto concrete. Miraculously, it turned out he was almost fine and could resume shooting in four days.
  • As director Evans couldn't find the right studio, he had to build the sets of the refrigerator scene on a badminton court. The thing had a thin roof, which combined with Indonesia's hot climate, made it so hot that crewmen were "dropping like flies". After trying and failing to cool it off with like 25 air conditioners, he just switched to shoot by night.

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