When director Gareth Evans released his film
'The Raid' a few years back, it destroyed us. It broke
us down and piece by piece put us back together. The
best action we had seen in a good decade… and some would even
argue the best action movie ever. A film with the impact
of 'The Raid' just doesn't go softly into the night, no sir, a
sequel was immediately offered up and we have to admit we were
concerned. I mean, what can you do with a movie called
'The Raid 2'? Have our hero go into another building and
beat up another horde of heavily armed villains to
death? Sure, I probably would still enjoy that, but it
would be the same movie. Well, Mr. Evans did not go down
that road again, but gave us something completely
different. Yes, our hero still beats people to death,
but now what we have here is a real live gangster movie.
Think 'Donnie Brasco' meets 'Game of Death', that's what you
are going to get with 'The Raid 2'.
After the unfortunate events that resulted in the apartment
massacre of the police force in the previous movie, Rama (Iko
Uwais) is briefing his boss on what went down and is prepared
to testify against that cop that led them to that
massacre. His boss isn't interested in that. Not
even a little bit. Bossman wants to root out corruption
in his police force and feels that Rama and his unique set of
skills would be perfect to go undercover to make this
happen. Rama isn't at all interested in this, just
wanting to be a husband and father, but a personal tragedy
changes his mind.
The plan is simple. Go enter the local jail for a couple
of months, befriend Uco (Arifin Putra), the son of the local
big boss, join the organization for a little while, get some
names, then come on home. Two years later Rama finally
gets out of jail. I gotta admit, he handled this
boondoggle of an operation much better than I would've
thought, but having helped Uco out in prison, just as planned,
he is now a lieutenant in the army of Boss Bangun (Tio
Pakusodewo).
The mob game however is one really dangerous
game. Uco is not happy with his old man and the jobs he
gives him. He wants to be a boss. It looks like
he's willing to just about anything to prove to his old man
that he can be this boss. Anything. Usually, at
this point, I'd inform you that a lot of stuff happens, and a
lot of stuff does happen, but it's really linear in its
focus. That focus, in case you were wondering, is
getting Rama in a position to kick people in the face, and
then ultimately, God willing, kill these people. The
thing is, in regards to his goal, I'm not exactly sure why
he's doing it, other than self-preservation. It was
awesome to watch though.
I am not sure what I expected going in to this movie 'The Raid
2', but I certainly was not expecting what I got. This
movie was nothing like original, outside of the completely
brutal violence, and I guess that's a good thing. Kind
of. You see, where 'The Raid' was a relatively brief
movie and probably under-plotted, 'The Raid 2' runs at a near
oppressive two and a half hours and is over-plotted. Two
and a half hours is a lot of awesome to endure.
Now because of all of the plotting elements, I didn't have a
100% rock solid grip on all of the gangs, and gangsters, and
back room dealings, and the motivations of certain characters
at certain times doing whatever it is they were doing.
Now in defense of director Gareth Evans and his screenwriters,
a lot of my inability to completely grasp ahold of this
plethora of plot stimuli could've been I simply wasn't
mentally prepared to deal with this after seeing the first
movie.
But all of that nonsense is really neither here nor
there. Yes, this movie is a bit long, and true enough
there were times I was feeling some of this length, but I can
guarantee you that I was never bored while watching 'The Raid
2', and while the plot might've been somewhat convoluted, it
never got in the way of what was really important in this
movie, that being the fight scenes, and they are spectacular.
The action in this iteration of what will eventually be a
legendary series are bigger, meaner, uglier, bloodier, and
longer. Much longer. Unrelentingly long to the
point this audience member was almost yelling out mercy.
There are so many tour de force action beatemups in this film,
that we are not even going to waste time describing them,
because chances are you've already seen them, or at the very
least are planning to watch this movie… to which I have to
ask… what is taking you so long?
'The Raid 2' is bigger and meaner and far more ambitious than
the movie it follows, and as a result, as hard as this is to
believe considering how much we enjoyed the first one, it is
even better. Again, 2.5 hours is a lot of awesome to sit
through, but awesome it still is.
