Fantasia 2026 Review: ‘Attack on Paradise’ is a Disappointing Knockoff of ‘The Raid’

It’s hard not to compare modern action movies to Gareth Evans’ The Raid, especially since it’s been the benchmark for many subsequent films that blew our minds after it. Kenji Tanigaki’s The Furious was hailed as the next The Raid. John Wick was in that same conversation. Most audiences unfamiliar with action films from the pre-1980s era likely didn’t see anything made in Hong Kong by the Shaw Brothers and, after the studio’s downfall, by Golden Harvest and Cinema City. However, in the case of Bob Coalers’  Attack on Paradise, which had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, The Raid is probably the most apt comparison one can make. 

I mean – the police targeting the movie’s titular apartment complex to bring down a drug lord who has fortified the place and made it impenetrable? Does that remind you of a certain movie? The plotline adds a layer of humanity to the proceedings, as ex-convict Suleyman (Saïd Boumazoughe) returns from prison to the Paradise apartments in the hopes of spending time with his ailing mother. However, he sees that crime boss Prince (Achmed Akkabi) has turned Paradise into an inhospitable criminal operation and chooses to help the police bring him down once they arrive to…raid the place. The comparisons speak for themselves. 

A movie like Attack on Paradise lives and dies on its action. You can draw shoddy characters and more than compensate for a bevy of well-executed and tactile fight choreographies. For a while, Coalers takes his time setting up the character drama at the heart of the story, before the action begins, and they’re the most textured sections of the picture. You feel immense empathy for Suleyman, even if the screenplay repeats ad nauseam how much time he wants to spend with his mother. Boumazoughe is also a pretty compelling lead, though his presence can sometimes feel overshadowed by other characters, including rookie cop Yasmine (Clara Cleymans), who becomes an important part of the raid once she is paired with Suleyman. 

The villain itself isn’t that interesting, but he’s at least played with a self-aware sense of caricature that we end up latching onto Suleyman’s simple quest. Sometimes, all you need is a one-note story with a bunch of kick-ass action to pump ourselves up. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single noteworthy action scene in Attack on Paradise that matches the excitement of Evans’s scene when he revolutionized the landscape of martial arts cinema by showcasing the true powers of Pencak Silat to the world. The aesthetics of Attack on Paradise are unimpressively staged, even as expressive neon colors soak the frame, an attempt to give its images some life. 

There are a few moments where one can notice Coalers’ inspirations, especially when he plays with the camera during a backward tilt in the middle of a one-on-one bathroom confrontation, but they’re so few and far between that we end up being disappointed by what’s on screen. Yes, there’s a lot of action, and once it begins, it never dies down. That said, “a lot of action” doesn’t have the word “good” in it, and Attack on Paradise’s carnage is completely forgettable and rudimentary. If you can’t make the main attraction of the movie an unmissable event (à la The Furious), how do you expect people to get excited? 

Watching the film, one can’t help but think of Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah, a duo of Moroccan-Belgian genre filmmakers who have completely revolutionized the way action should be shot and felt. One has to think about them, not only because of their influence, but also because Saïd Boumazoughe starred in Rebel. Their flowmatic approach to cinema is refreshing and invigorating, both in their local and Hollywood productions. Coalers doesn’t possess the same verve as Adil and Bilall, even if he desperately tries to replicate their expressive color palette and dynamic camerawork. The Raid with Adil & Bilall inspirations certainly looks fun, but the execution leaves so much to be desired.

At least the acting gives Attack on Paradisesigns of life, but this isn’t the start the festival needed for its action section, which has usually given us some truly mind-melting feats of carnage, including, in recent memory, Yugo Sakamoto’s Baby Assassins: Nice Days and Soi Cheang’s Twilight of the Warriors: Walled In. When the best action movie I’ve seen at Fantasia this year, so far, is the 2K restoration of Chang Cheh and Kuei Chih-Hung’s The Delinquent, there’s something desperately missing, but we hope the festival picks up much sooner than later, or else this 30^th edition is looking to be a big bust.

SCORE: ★★