The Raid 2 (2014)

Pretty Good

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

True to its essence, the characters remain on the same line and manage to entertain the viewer, each highlighting their own distinctive qualities or touches.

Blistering performances.

If you looking for the coolest fight scenes and action you have seen on a movie look no further then the raid. Sadly no Silat masters near me:) I will always be an advocate for raid 1 but raid 2 and the whole syndicate stuff was a bit over the top. Raid 1 didn't have a whole lot of story but you could bond with a swat officer going to do some bad stuff but in the end of the day just wanting to get home to his wife and kids and have reconciliation with his brother. Tremendous action baby. Second one took it up a notch for better and for worse. The fight scenes and stunts were all the more BA and creative but it sort of ended there for me. They just wanted to so out do the first one which I say they did, but they had to take like the cgi gore spatting in the camera from a good amount to like 300: rise of an empire level gore.. that coupled with the constant betrayals and deceit and treatment of women, and literal slitting of throats randomly was never ending without a break. Look I know that happens, but have a little better pacing like raid 1 or else it gets a bit depressing. In scenes I would go from wow oh dang to what is even going on right now this is a little psychotic. Also it make me think of some current things going on between west papa New Guinean s and East Indonesians which adds some dislike to the movie. Good movie. A bit much. Maybe stick with raid 1. I would wait for your kids to at least be in their late teens or early twenties or unless they are real mature.

Double bill time, Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans has made a big splash with his action one-two punch which puts the Indonesian martial art "Pencak Silat" on a bigger map. Swimming against the tide of an inexorably digitized world, since the noughties, action movies have been experiencing a somewhat fundamentalistic revolution ushered in by ONG-BAK: THE THAI WARRIOR (2003), where a more tactile, point-blank and lethal combat style greatly relying on the performers' physical prowess sounding the death knell for a plethora of CGI-heavy schlock, and Gareth Evans takes the revolution further down that road, at any time of the day, it is more than welcomingBlanketed in its slate blue hue, THE RAID: REDEMPTION has a setting like a single-location entrapment horror flick, a catastrophic heavy blow incurs to a team of elite squad when they raid inside a tenement tower block owned by the crime lord Tama Riyado (Sahetapy) in Jakarta's slums, it turns out to be a set-up as a corollary of corruption among police top-brass. Assailed by not zombies but practically zombie-looking inhabitants (bedraggled drug addicts mostly) and a cohort of Tama's henchmen, they might find some painful irony (if they are still breathing) from recollecting the paradoxical pep talk of Sergeant Jaka (Taslim), who is leading the raid, paraphrasing here: it is a highly dangerous mission, but I don't want to see any of those seats empty when we return. The one who is bestowed with a protagonist nimbus is Rama (Uwais), a tyro in the forces and has an ax to grind in the game, when all the ammo is expended, his killer martial art skill starts to tip the scale in the bloodshed. Since its no-account story-line seldom fluctuates with plot development (barring a fraternal reunion), and although many tropes of suspense routinely deployed to the hilt, it is the action pieces taking our breath away, the go-for-the-jugular (joints, limbs, and other more cardinal parts) pragmatism and Evans' lenience on blood and guts, skewered together one set piece after another, our rapt attention becomes a given, and the brutal aesthetics reaches its crescendo in the close-range combat between Rama, his brother Andi (Alamsyah) and Tama's top muscle, a disheveled Mad Dog (Ruhian, who is a martial art virtuoso and the fight choreographer for both movies, also plays a completely different character in the sequel). After REDEMPTION successfully testing the water, THE RAID 2: BERANDAL (which means thug in Indonesian) is expectedly souped up by a significantly boosted budget and an ampler length (150 minutes, 50 minutes longer than the first installment). Mapping out an ambitious gangster turf war saga, Evans' script swiftly sends Rama to the joint to befriend Uco (Putra), the son of Bangun (Pakusadewo), one of the two kingpins of Jakarta's underworld, where a muddy mêlèe during a downpour set alight the first frisson of excitement (it is a virtue Evans doesn't overuse the worn- out slo-mo shtick, after THE MATRIX 1999 and its countless emulators, enough is enough). In fact, the resultant story veers more towards Uco's ill-conceived subversion, and Putra, not quite a martial artist himself but commendably takes up the gauntlet as a pompous gilded youth, too thrusting and wanting both wits and patience to mellow into a rightful heir of his father's cosmic empire, particularly when there is nothing to imperil his standing, what is the fuss anyway? Maybe like in every patriarch's incubus, he is just a bad seed and driven at lengths to carry out a patricidal sin, Putra's performance is vehement, visceral and transforms Uco as the film's heart of matter, a grab bag of what is wrong with today's youngsters. In the action section, on the one hand, Evans continues choreographing striking fighting sequences of Pencak Silat, and playing up the possibility of orchestration within a two-by-four space (a prison bathroom, or inside a barreling car); on the other hand, in tandem with an enclosed fistfight, he also cuts his teeth into a sterling car chase set piece with an ace in his sleeve, and what an adrenaline rush it spurs! Although it would be remiss of me to not mention a congenital hiccup rather common in action fares, those conspicuous ready-to-take-the-hit poses or caesuras, mostly from foot soldiers during their fleeting screen-time, it immediately dispels the "realness" of all the onerously rehearsed teamwork. The most pyrotechnic eye-catcher is indubitably the final showdown between Rama and the karambit-knives-wielding killer, credited as the Assassin (Rahman), which makes Very Tri Yulisman's Baseball Bat Man and Julie Estelle's Hammer Girl quite bathetic in their gore-fest, not to mention the boss who prefers heavy weaponry but is inept enough to toss it to the wrong one when the crunch comes.Both movies are cracking genre pieces made with labor of love, devotion and dexterity, and Evans' directorial flair takes a crucial peg up under the sequel's grander scale, blissfully, one can see the potential in a filmmaker which can unbridle the genre parameters.

The Raid 2 is an absolute masterclass of action cinema. It picks up immediately after the events of the first film and our main character, Rama, is almost instantly thrown right back into the world of crime that he only got a taste of in The Raid.This film excels in almost every way but lets first talk about it's main selling point: the action. The Raid 2 contains, as the title suggests, the absolute greatest action sequences that I have ever seen. Everything is brutally realistic to a point where you start to feel bad for the characters involved, but at the same time you never want the fights to stop. The martial arts choreography is something to behold, and the direction is absolutely stunning. There are very few cuts and every time there is one it is absolutely necessary and enhances the scene rather than detracting from it. The main actor, Iko Uwais, clearly did all his own stunts, which is something that you rarely see and is to be applauded.Speaking of direction and cinematography, even outside of the action this film is absolutely gorgeous. The director, Gareth Evans, has a way of making certain settings feel very real. Clean when appropriate, grimy when appropriate.The acting is great all around. Iko Uwais plays extremely well as Rama and he has a lot more to do in this movie than he did in the last. Arifin Putra does a great job as Uco, the unhinged son of a mob boss, and returning as a different character, Yayan Ruhian is incredible as Prakoso despite his minimal screen time.If I have to choose a flaw with this movie it would be that it is a bit overlong at 150 minutes, whereas the first was a comfortable 101 minutes. Despite this one minor issue I cannot stress enough that this is a must-see for any action junkie. The Raid 2 is truly amazing.The End

With a strong style the second chapter of the honored policeman makes us shriek every time a bone breaks as the director overcomes the dangers of a story set in a city and not just floors in a thoughtful and well realized mafia drama.In a larger picture as a movie lover I couldn't be happier because movies are getting in a realm where more and more countries are able to fund productions!