The Raid 2 Review

Released stateside two years ago, Gareth Evans’ The Raid: Redemption was a surprise hit.  The Indonesian martial arts film was a shot of pure adrenaline for action movie fans.  Its concept was simple: a SWAT team is sent to take out a 30 story building filled with criminals and psychopaths.  Evans made a simple martial arts movie because he couldn’t get funding for the film he really wanted to make.  What he lacked in budget he made up for in some of the most dazzling fight choreography in years.  Rather than helm the English language remake, Evans decided to make the film he really wanted to do as the sequel.  The Raid 2 (sometimes subtitled Berandal) is a larger scale, more expensive follow up that still delivers the thrills of the original.

Before he can even recuperate from the events of the first film, SWAT Team rookie (and one of the few survivors of the first film) Rama (Iko Uwais) is recruited to infiltrate a powerful gang to expose the corruption of the police force.  As he befriends a major mob boss’ son (Afirin Putra), Rama finds himself spending years in prison building a cover while his wife and infant son go on without him.  Meanwhile, the Indonesian mob Rama infiltrates finds itself on unstable ground with the Japanese, while independent mobster Bejo (Alex Abbad) proves to be a wild card.

As that previous paragraph indicates, there is a lot more plot and character moments in this film than in The Raid.  It is almost 50 minutes longer, but with probably the same amount of time spent on the fights.  Unfortunately the plot isn’t that great and it could’ve been trimmed down or clarified.  Between the warring factions, the dirty cops and Bejo, it’s hard to keep track of what is happening and why whereas the original was rather straightforward.  That said, the shortcomings of the plot are more than forgiven in the fights, which are just as good if not better in some cases than the ones from the original.  Evans had a bigger budget and the money is there, with plenty of variety in daring set pieces.  They also seem to want to challenge themselves in the fights, with several fights taking place in confined spaces or using just about anything in the room to help out in a fight.

There are no weak links in the fighters in this film.  Uwais has to be in the vanguard of the next generation of martial arts stars.  The things he and his co-stars do in this film boggle the mind.  There are prison fights, an elaborate car chase and a brother/sister assassin combo who are adept at baseball bats and hammers respectively.  The punches and kicks come so fast you’d think these guys weren’t human.  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a bathtub filled with ice for Uwais (or just about anyone else) that he could lie down in during breaks in filming.  These fights look brutal and real to the point where one fighter towards the end has his entire face red from bruises.  Best of all, there isn’t a clunker among the fights to be found.

They’re all serviced by Evans’ direction.  For everyone sick of rapid cutting and incoherent action, The Raid films are for you.  Alongside the recent Fast and Furious films, The Raid 2 shows us the action and doesn’t jumble it up in excessive (and probably concealing) editing.  Even in the chaos of the rapid fire blows dished out, it’s not at all confusing.  When someone delivers a painful blow, you feel it too.  It’d be hard to see these guys dealing out this type of punishment without garnering a reaction.

Even with a subpar plot, The Raid 2 still shows Hollywood action movies (often made for much more than The Raid 2’s $4.5 million budget) how it’s done.  The original is a leaner production for sure, but this one takes advantage of having more money and a bigger canvas to use.  These films should be game changers for how action is seen in movies these days, or at least the perfect film to show a group of people looking to discover something many bigger productions have been missing: a series that blends both brutality and vitality equally.

Grade: B