Movie review: The Raid 2 will leave you wanting more
THE first film was an exhausting, yet electrifying screen experience - but the obligatory sequel The Raid 2 will leave you wanting more.
Leigh Paatsch
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2011’S THE RAID stands bloodied but unbowed as one of the most breathtaking, confronting and adrenalised action films of the past decade.
The setup allowed for no let-up: a handful of cops had to bludgeon, stab and shoot their way out of a tenement block housing every badass-at-large in the whole of Indonesia.
It was an exhausting, yet electrifying screen experience. The good guys were living on their wits. The audience was gasping for breath.
Now comes the obligatory sequel The Raid 2, which doesn’t so much up the ante, as spread it far and wide.
Writer-director Gareth Evans’ command of a frenzied fight sequence remains in a league of its own.
Nevertheless, he might have bit off more than he can chew with the Godfather-esque plotting inelegantly crammed between the biffo.
The story picks up pace immediately from where the last film had skidded to a well-earned standstill.
The feisty featherweight fighting machine known as Rama (Iko Uwais) is still a man of the law, but his cohorts inside Jakarta’s Police Department are seriously testing the limits of his allegiance.
With his wife and child in danger from those seeking vengeance for his past exploits, Rama is persuaded to go undercover to prevent any calamity on the home front.
After spending two long years posing as a prisoner in jail, Rama wins the trust of the heir-apparent to the biggest crime ring in the region.
Once lodged in the inner sanctum, Rama finds himself a reluctant foot soldier in an ever-intensifying turf war that has several rival kingpins (including Japanese Yakuza types) jockeying for supremacy.
The reasoning behind who’s hating who gets mighty hard to follow on a number of occasions during The Raid 2.
Many of the talk-driven scenes border on tiresome after a while (Evans ain’t no Tarantino when it come to penning dialogue that zings). Momentum falls away dramatically, and then must be rebuilt all over again.
Thankfully, the action component of The Raid 2 is so strong that most other flaws will be bound to be forgiven.
Both the intricate design and devastating impact of each fight sequence seen here maintain the high standards set by the first film.
There is a raw, animalistic fury to Evans’ work that sets him a world apart from his Hollywood counterparts.
As to be expected, Rama’s stint in the slammer injects the first few stoushes with a withering intensity. A prison-yard punch-up staged in thick, sticky mud must have been a monster to shoot for cast and crew alike. This sequence alone is a classic of its kind.
Later on in the picture, as the odds really begin to stack up against the almost-comically indestructible Rama, the choreographed combat becomes somewhat more conventional. But no less potent in its capacity to shock, shame and shut-up an audience.
Though unleashing 150 minutes’ worth of brute force asks a lot of the uninitiated, those in the know will still be left wanting more.
The Raid 2 opens nationally tomorrow.
The Raid 2 (R18+)
Director: Gareth Evans (The Raid)
Starring: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Tio Pakusadewo, Oka Antara, Alex Abbad.
Rating : ***1/2
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