Another manifests in arresting moments of the aforementioned irony, which work due to the skillful cohesiveness of the complex script that sets them up. Another is a bloodless image of the effects of torture created by an actress and an up-close camera. The characters' weaknesses are likewise shared, and that's just one of the things that gives HELL RAIDERS its surprising ability to haunt the viewer long after it ends. The heroism in this film is shared by many, including a thief reformed by his thirst for revenge and at least two women who fight, in completely credible roles, with at least as much grit as the men in the film. He gives a fine performance as a character, not a hero. Here he fights them a century later, with guns and grenades, rather than sorcery and swords. It's notable that Prima played the comic-book folk-hero fighting the Dutch colonials in the early nineteenth century crowd-pleaser THE WARRIOR. It has an ensemble cast which includes, but in no way defers to, the best-known action star of Indonesia's film boom of the nineteen-eighties, Barry Prima. This is no B-movie diversion this is a sweat-dripping labor of love. What sets this one apart is its realized ambition. The initiated will note that this is true of any Rapi film available in English, most of which are lore-heavy horror or martial-arts fantasy tempered with a weirdness that's never been exceeded by films made anywhere else in the world. It has the highest production values of any Rapi film I've seen, which isn't saying much, but what it lacks in resources, it more than makes up for with its crackling energy and genuine heart. It tells the story of a guerrilla army from an Indonesian village during the war with the Dutch in 1945. This Indonesian war epic from Rapi studios, the people who brought us THE DEVIL'S SWORD, plays, at some times, with the slanted melodrama of a vintage American WW II pic, and, at others, with the irony and emotional intensity of Sam Fuller on top of his game.
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