The Raid 2: Berandal Will Kick Your A*s
Gareth Evans's brutal 148-minute martial arts masterpiece is not for the faint of heart.
Often we go to the movies to feel something. Whether it’s to laugh, to be scared, or to be moved to tears. I recently saw The Raid 2: Berandal, and watching it, I felt exhilarated. It’s rare that an action movie has that effect in a time when CGI robots and blurry, explosion-wrought fight scenes seem to permeate the genre. But The Raid 2 doesn’t need star power, giant monsters, or a budget equaling the GDP of a small nation because it has some of the most visceral, intense fight sequences ever put to film. Bones were crunched, blood was spilled, and I loved every savagely and gleefully violent second of it.
For the uninitiated, The Raid 2: Berandal is the sequel to the highly acclaimed Indonesian martial-arts film The Raid: Redemption. Filmed on a budget less than the cost-per-minute of Transformers 3, its bare-bones plot and vicious action sequences cemented its standing as one of the best action movies of the last decade. Expectations were set high for Welsh triple-threat writer/director/editor Gareth Evans, and the film he has followed up with has delivered on every level.
Where the first “Raid” confined itself to a single apartment building, Berandal ups the ante in every way imaginable, telling an ambitious city-spanning crime story reminiscent of The Departed and The Godfather. Taking place just hours after the first "Raid", The Raid 2 kicks off with Rama (Iko Uwais) returning from the events of Redemption to find he must go undercover to protect his wife and newborn child. Rama is sent to infiltrate a major crime family on the verge of an all-out gang war in order to uncover corrupt police officers.
While the story is a major step up from Redemption, the action scenes are still the main attraction, and they do not disappoint. Evans and co. have managed to achieve crystal-clear, vibrant action sequences that ooze creativity and style. It’s a gorgeously filmed movie, and when Uwais gets down to business, it’s almost poetic. The ever-mobile camerawork and long tracking shots keeps the lightning-fast pace at fever pitch, yet I was never at a loss for what was going on. Evans uses lovingly crafted, picturesque wide shots of his fighters, letting the choreography shine through instead of obscuring it with quick-cuts and blurs. The camera’s ethereal, floating quality is made even more impressive by the lack of CGI, as there are several shots that are bound to elicit a “how did they do that?” And yes, it is violent. Gloriously so. A pair of assassins credited only as “Hammer Girl” and “Baseball Bat Man” make an appearance halfway through the film that is memorable, to say the least.
The Raid 2 is not a nice movie. It won’t slow down for you to catch your breath. When it first screened at the Sundance Film Festival, somebody fainted in the middle of the movie. Don’t see it with your grandma. But from a ferocious one-on-one showdown in a stark white kitchen to a brutal mud-soaked prison riot to a car chase through busy Jakarta streets, Berandal is a masterclass in action filmmaking. If that sounds like your thing, and I know it is mine, then grab a couple friends and experience it for yourself. X
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