Poor Rama: having just barely limped his way out of one Jakartan hellhole, the battered and bruised rookie SWAT member finds himself thrown straight into another one. There’s one key difference, however: this hellhole’s considerably bigger than the tight corridors of a locked-down apartment block, with Rama thrust into a ruthless world of violent mobsters, deadly assassins and impending gang wars. With his family in danger, he’s forced to go undercover, tasked with infiltrating the Jakartan criminal underworld under the guise of a no-name thug turned foot soldier for the mob. What this means for action hero Iko Uwais and director Gareth Evans is that in sequel “The Raid 2” they have a bigger playground to play in than they did in 2011: now that we’re not stuck inside a single building, there's more room to explore and more chance for the action to be more varied and more spread out. Evans takes full advantage of this: we have a speeding car chase, a nightclub punch-up, a mud-soaked prison riot, a baseball bat attack on the street and a brawl on a subway train between knife-wielding gangsters and a character known only as “hammer girl” — no prizes for guessing her weapon of choice. What this also means is that along with the increase in scale, Evans has a bigger, more complex story to tell, which certainly shows in the runtime: clocking in at a whopping 150 minutes, it runs almost a whole hour longer than its predecessor. But though it’s certainly not as lean as “The Raid,” “The Raid 2” is just as mean, if not meaner: there’s enough broken bones and splattering blood on display to help keep Steven Seagal’s career going for the next few decades, and though the scale of the story has been greatly upped, Evans crucially keeps the action operating on the same level of bare-knuckle intensity that made the first “Raid” such a blast.
The action, as anyone could have predicted, is exhilarating, achieving the same kind of operatic, visceral mayhem achieved in the first “Raid:” you feel every punch, every kick, every baseball bat to the face and every claw hammer to the jugular. As pro ass-hander Rama, Uwais is once again an astonishing force of nature, as is Evans’ camerawork, which again matches the mesmerising, hyper-kinetic fight choreography in breathtaking agility. The difference is that there are more breathers in between the fights, with a fair chunk of the runtime spent outlining a complex story involving gangsters and their various betrayals, and following Rama as he works undercover in the mob system. This obviously won’t please everyone; this is not the non-stop thrill-ride that was “The Raid,” with the action scenes more spread out and more time spent on plot and character. But for me, “The Raid 2” does what any great sequel does: it expands on its predecessor’s universe and pushes things in a different direction, all the while retaining what made the first film tick. Evans maintains a balance between story and action and delivers a film that's equal counts an enthralling, sprawling, who-betrayed-who crime thriller in the vein of “Infernal Affairs” and a bone-snapping, jaw-dropping martial arts extravaganza guaranteed to have you gasping in awe and squirming in disgusted delight.
Rating: 10/10
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