For those who haven’t been keeping up with foreign flicks, 2011’s The Raid: Redemption was one of the most entertaining martial arts/action movies of recent years. The simple tale of cops trapped in an apartment with vicious criminals was a thrill-packed joyride. It was also an international hit, resulting in an inevitable sequel. The Raid 2 takes the first film’s hero and places him into not only a different environment, but a different type of genre – the crime/gangster picture. This effort is admittedly bloated and ungainly, but a couple of superbly choreographed, jaw-dropping action scenes towards the close ultimately make up for the butt-numbing length.
As mentioned, the sequel abandons the single location set up of the original and spins a detailed analysis of a Jakarta crime family syndicate. Heroic cop Rama (Iko Uwais) is placed undercover to infiltrate the network. He befriends Ucok (Arifin Putra), the sadistic son of the organization head and is given a job within the outfit. As he learns more about the operations, Rama not only discovers corruption at the police department, but also must survive a plot to usurp leadership.
Over the two and one half hour running time, there are dozens of new characters introduced and groundwork laid explaining how the enterprise works and the personal business philosophies of its leaders. Much of it is interesting, but at times it is over-explained and over-plotted. At the end of the day, there’s one hero and a bunch of bad guys. Everyone knows the protagonist will simply have to beat the pulp out of all of them. We don’t need to know every minute step behind one secondary character’s efforts to destabilize order and attempt to take power.
Perhaps the focus shift occurs because Rama is so honest a hero that it’s impossible to believe he’d ever be lured into the underworld lifestyle. He doesn’t have a big character arc and at times is seems placed in the background, waiting for his moment to leap into action. In fact, for a large section of the movie, the script almost seems to forget about its lead and emphasizes Ucok instead. Around this time viewers are also reintroduced to a character from the first film. It’s a diversion that offers an impressive fight scene, but otherwise doesn’t really feel essential to the story.
Thankfully, when the hero does find himself in brutal action, it’s spectacular. These sequences are even more elaborate than in the original film and manage to surpass them in sheer bravado. There’s a car chase that features absolutely incredible stunt work, as characters leap from vehicle to vehicle, fight in closed quarters, and are tossed out windows onto the road. Even more impressive is the finale, which finds Rama facing off against a blind killer, a baseball bat wielding thug and a blade brandishing assassin. The villains are appropriately intimidating and choreography is amazingly fast, aided (one assumes) by under-cranking the cameras to speed up the movement by just a frame or two. These energetic fights are graphic, bloody, thrilling and incredibly tense.
The Raid 2 has some fat that weighs it down, but the fight sequences won’t disappoint audiences when they do arrive. Despite the pacing issues, this follow-up is likely to become as much of a cult favorite as its predecessor.