THE RAID 2 (2014) Dir: Gareth Evans

The Raid, released in 2012 in the U.K, which I had the privilege of attending it's Welsh Premier, set a bench mark for feature action films, it's brutal 18 rated combat and disregard for toning down the violence led The Raid to become a huge cult success. 

Written, directed and edited by Cardiff born director Gareth Evans but filmed in Indonesia with Indonesian actors didn't deter people like most foreign language films do and it was a pretty big deal. During the Q&A of the premier, Evans stated that he'd started working on the sequel and said how he had an idea for a fight in moving car. Fast forward 2 years and The Raid 2 has just opened nation wide. Evans could have taken the easy option and copied the plot of the first film but instead went in a completely different direction, he took the film from it's B-movie stylings and plopped us into what I would call a film written by Johnny To, Shot by Kubrick and directed by John Woo. The Raid 2 ups the ante action wise and drops the viewer into a world of the shady gangsters who run the streets of Jakarta.

I'm gonna try and avoid spoilers in this review when I talk about the plot but if I accidentally let something slip I am very sorry...

The films opens 2 hours after the events of the first film. Rama meets with a cop who runs a discreet police unit of undercover cops who shoot first but don't ask any questions after. Rama is asked to join the task force, he refuses at first but is persuaded when the head of the secret police unit explains that he and his family are not safe. Rama has to get close to Uco, the son of one of the big time Jakarta crime families. The only way this can happen is if Rama is sent to prison. Two years later Rama is released and his undercover mission truly starts as he makes his way into the crime family to take them down and re-unite with his family.

That's all your getting plot wise because if I carried on it would totally spoil the movie for you.

Let me start with the bad news. It's not the film advertised on the U.K poster, someone described it as the Dark Knight of Action movies, to me that's a redundant quote as when the Dark Knight came out it was referred to as the Godfather Part 2 Of comic book movies, The Raid 2 is a film of its own, it shouldn't be compared to films such as The Godfather or The Dark Knight movies, The Raid 2 is a sprawling crime/action thriller who's ambition is it's biggest flaw. On a low budget of only $4.2mil, Evans has crafted an exciting action pic that builds upon the creativity of the first film, from what I hear, the script was already written before Evans made The Raid and was going to shot after his film Merantau but funding fell through so Evans re-wrote the script to accommodate Rama's after raid adventures, To me this is very obvious as the gangster drama and the action scenes , at times, feel jarring and sporadic, and as a viewer it seemed like this scene sets up an action scene followed by another scene to set up an action scene. This isn't a massive problem but for me coming from a background of watching films like Johnny To's Election and Woo's Hard boiled where the drama and action are balanced, I don't think Evans got the balance right, only just though as the film makes up for what the plot is lacking in it's incredible fight scenes but more on that in a bit. I mean while the fight scenes are incredibly well handled and do make the time speed by, the dramatic, dialogue heavy scenes seem laboured and the pacing drags it down. If they were two different films this might have worked on a much better level but as it stands, it's the pacing of the film that lets it down at certain points.

Another issue is the appearance and disappearance of characters or the fact that certain characters are much more interesting than the time they're given on screen such as a Yayan Ruhian who was such a prominent character as Mad Dog in the first film is woefully underused in the sequel and we know very little about his character, but his two fight scenes are incredible, the other two characters who don't get near enough screen time and again are way more interesting than some of the other characters are that of Hammer Girl and Baseball bat boy, there seems to be a bond between these two, she's clearly deaf as BBB signs to her and he's clearly looked after her for years, is he her brother, are they lovers or did they meet as kids on the streets of Jakarta?... we don't know, this is one of the other problems The Raid 2 has, these three characters were not given the treatment they deserved but I can understand Evans might not have been able to include such back story as the film already runs at 147minutes and including background info on these characters may have pushed the run time to over three hours, hopefully we'll see more of these characters in The Raid 3.

Now onto the good news. This time around, Evans introduces us to an expanded Raid universe, taking us onto the mean streets of Jakarta and introducing us to new characters such as Ucok, Eka and Ucok's father Bangun, the head of one of two crime families residing in the City, the other family is the Japanese Goto crime family and the two are at peace at the moment. Ucok is an ambitious gangster, sick of living in his fathers shadow and feels that his old man is wasting what they have and feels they should branch out further, take on the Goto's and increase their hold on the city. Ucok is brilliantly played by Arifin Putra, his emotional confrontation with his father towards the end is not only brilliantly acted but brilliantly written by Evans and the scene packs a punch, ending with an almighty shock. Ucok's father Bangun again is brilliantly played by Tio Pakusodweo. Bangun is an aging but smart business man but doesn't think his son has the chops to rise up and take over from his father yet, something that Ucok disagree's with. Together, both Arifin and Tio are wonderful. Eka, played by Oka Antara is Bangun's assistant, or is he?, Eka is a good character but much like Hammer girl, Prokoso and BBB, his character is underdeveloped which leads to a scene where he makes a statement to Rama which you can see coming a mile off, but he's still pretty good. Finally we get to Rama, played by the brilliant Iko Uwais, a few years back Iko was working in a mobile phone shop, Evans saw him at a silat demonstration and the two became friends, now Iko has starred in two of the most exhilarating martial arts films of the last ten years even popping up in Keanu Reeves' Man Of Tai Chi, but it's as Rama where people are going to remember him, in the first film Iko showed his martial arts skills, in The Raid 2, Evans allows Iko to show his acting skills and he is brilliant as the put upon Rama. He portrays Rama in this film as deeply confused, tortured soul who finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of crime and leaving his actual role of a police officer behind but Iko not only showcases his acting skills but he gets to show off his incredible martial arts skills again but on a grander scale. The speed on this guy is insane, the scene in the prison where he's punching the wall is incredible (don't worry that scene is in the trailer). People will talk about when is Iko going to make his Hollywood début, to which I say I hope he doesn't, look at Jackie Chan's American movies, apart from the 3 Rush Hour film and Rumble In The Bronx, Chan has been relegated to kids films or action comedies, look at Jet Li's U.S career, with the exception of Romeo Must Die and Kiss OF The Dragon, the majority of his films have been mediocre, If Iko makes his way to the U.S, I don't think it will be long before he returns to Indonesia.

Now for what we all want to see from a sequel to The Raid, the action...The film kicks off with a brawl inside a toilet cubical which sees Rama take on a relentless stream of prisoners, this is kind of like a throwback to the first film with it's enclosed location and the onslaught that proceeds, after this scene, the action scenes get bigger and bigger and on a much grander scale from the incredible prison riot fight which is done in a series of single takes and edited together and lasts for a good 7 or so minutes which is a combination of broken limbs, blood spurts and stabbings while sloshing about in mud. This set piece is so grandiose and epic it sets the tone for the action to come in the next 130 minutes.

The film's brutality gets larger by each set piece culminating in one of the greatest one on one beat downs ever captured on screen, remember that scene in Jackie Chan's Gorgeous where Jackie takes on Bradley James Allen, well it's like that scene but with a ton of gore and a zero fucks given attitude. There's gun fights, fist fights, a fight in a moving vehicle and that car chase, oh my god that car chase is so incredible it puts the car chase in The Matrix Reloaded to shame, speeding through the streets of Jakarta with thugs firing bullets at you while you're having a punch up with 5 men inside the moving vehicle, it needs to be seen to be believed. Hammer Girl's train fight is also incredibly well filmed and feature so much blood and violence that I would imagine that scene alone would land The Raid 2 with an 18 certificate. Yayan Rahuan's fights are again brilliantly executed and shows a master at work. My only gripe with some of the scenes, especially watched on cinema screen is that at times the camera movements are so fast that some things become blurry, but I think these scenes will feel more brutal on a home cinema screen in 1080p HD. Back to the final fight, set in a kitchen, It's a brutal, bloody 10 minute one on one death match between Rama and the assassin, played by Cecep Arif Rahman, a psychopathic killer and master martial artist. You see everything, every punch, kick, throw, slam and knife slash and it's levels of brutality are way off the brutality scale. It's truly one of best of the three main set pieces of the film following the prison riot and the car chase.

The Raid 2 doesn't shy away from showing the violence, it's there in all it gory glory and Evans allows the blood to flow freely, this is something we've not seen in Hollywood since Paul Verhoeven and the Mobile Infantry landed on Klendathu in Starship Trooper, the violence is brutal, unrelenting and for people who can stomach whatever is thrown at you. Some people can't hack the violence and i've been told there have been a few walk outs over the content of the film, however, in the screening I went to, in the row below us was a 20 something Indian woman by herself who thoroughly enjoyed it so there are some people who surprise you. For me, a life long gore fanatic who's sat through the old Italian nasties such as Cannibal Holocaust and Fulci's Zombi to OTT action fare like The Rambo's, The Predators and the like, I can pretty much stomach anything and while it's an incredibly violent film, was it the most violent film ever made?...hell no, it's close but once you've seen a man hack a woman to death with a machete during anal sex, your bar is raised pretty high. By the way that film I was referring to was A Serbian Film, not really a recommendation to the average movie goer, and not what I get up to when there's no one around. So yes it was an incredibly violent film but not the most violent film ever made, it's probably the most violent martial arts film ever to play to western audience though.

Rounding out this review, one thing that stood out even more than the action and the plot was the sound design, it was incredible, the car revs, the gun-fire, the punches and kicks but the most astounding sound came from BBB as he would hit people with his metallic bat, that clang of metal as it connects with a bone or a skull is incredible. It deserves an Oscar for just that alone. Composer Joe Trapanese returns as the films composer minus Linkin Park's Mike Shinoda this time and he continues his techno/dubstep/hip-hop/classical style that was used on the first film and again it works brilliantly with kinetic action sequences and Evans knows that this film is a much grander affair and to show us the viewers that we are watching something epic and also dramatic, he includes Georg Friedrick Haendel's Sarabande, The main theme used in Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. The film is also stylishly shot, unlike the first film's straight up action style and kinetic camera work, which is still in this one, Evans tries emulating Kubrick's visual style with some spot on one point perspective shots of corridors and restaurants. The film features some wonderful production design to while also showing us the city of Jakarta.

So to wrap this review up, which has gone on far longer than I expected, The Raid 2 is an incredible action film let down by some pacing issues and some characters not given enough screen time, saying that what we have is a 2 and a half hour action extravaganza that kicks the ass, the head, the chest, breaks the legs, the arms and the neck of anything Hollywood has produced in nearly 20 years, it's a film on such a grand scale made on such a small budget, Merantau was a “hey look what I can do”, The Raid was “ See I fucking told you” and The Raid 2 is “now do you believe me”. It's a film not for the faint of heart, it's a film for people who like seeing graphic violence, incredible action and stunts and who like there crime films brutal, dark and honest. Simply put, The Raid 2 is FUCKING AWESOME!!!