Rama is back and ready to kick some fuckin' ass and take some fuckin' names. Shotgun mother fucker. The Bad Lieutenant. The man that was never there. The only fuckin' choice. If you're a fuckin' badass, you will look even more badass in a mother fuckin' hoodie. Deep fuckin' Cover. Shit fight. Wall boxing. The Mop of Death. Curb fuckin' stomp. Mud wrestling. Rama's Magic Mike moment. A flat screen tv. Yummy SIM card. A strap-on king-kong dong. An oriental rug. Sauve Uco. Fuckin' karaoke. You can't make a sequel to The Raid without Mad fuckin' Dog. Red, Red, Wine. Mad Dog's baby mama drama. A beeper. How the fuck-fuckin'-fuck do you kill a Mad fuckin' Dog? Sign language. Stop,…

Having seen countless reviews I got the distinct impression it was top heavy in boring drama and the real kick ass action only happens in the last 20 to 30 minutes! It couldn't have been further from the truth! You couldn't swing a dead cat without hitting a phenomenal action sequence from beginning to end for it was riddled with it!

Yes there was an attempt at developing a more complex storyline and fleshing out its characters! Evans was stuck between a rock and a hard place! He was damned if he did and damned if he didn't! And the very same people who demanded exposition and developed characters were the very first to complain when he acquiesced to their…

Ein „knochenbrechendes Vergnügen“. Ein „monumentales Erlebnis“. Der „Dark Knight des Action-Kinos“: Die weltweite Kritiker-Euphorie zu „The Raid 2“ kennt keine Grenzen – und ich kann es bis in die letzte Faser meiner Gestalt nachvollziehen. Deswegen sollen die folgenden Zeilen weder wie die x-te 17-Semester-Filmethik-Abhandlung klingen, noch beim Eloquenz-Schwanzvergleich der globalen Filmpresse mitwirken. Sie sollen einfach eine kleine Geschichte erzählen. Darüber wie „The Raid 2“ meinem Körper in Besitz nahm.

Wie es der Job und das Schicksal so wollten, war ich vor einiger Zeit in London, um ein Interview mit Sir Ian McKellen zu führen. Das Unschöne daran: Ich kam mit einem frühen Flug und hatte zuvor nur wenig gepennt. Das Dilemma: Mein Rückflug ging erst am Abend. Mein Plan: Ich…

Completely improving on its already masterful predecessor by a tenfold, The Raid 2 finds director Gareth Evans at his absolute best as he carefully crafts a truly original & brilliant masterwork of an action-epic follow-up that moves along at a brisk pace despite its immense 150-minute runtime, and does a lot of things the first Raid film missed out on to make it entirely perfect.

As all significant sequels should, The Raid 2 profoundly expands upon many of the favorable ideas present in the first installment, and undoubtedly ups a lot of the stakes in this by continuing the narrative on a much more grander & ambitious scale.

The film itself is also considerably story/dialogue-driven now (especially when compared to its action-heavy…

Things I've learned from The Raid 2:

- Indonesian people snap like twigs.

- I didn't like the first film because of its lack of plot and its repetitive nature. The Raid 2 proves that actually having a plot does not necessarily make a film better.

- If I ever were to take over Indonesian organized crime I'd do two things. First close all the hardware stores and second bring guns. They'd have no weapons and the guns they have are useless as they are all crap at shooting them.

- Indonesian Bruce Campbell exists!!! His name is Arifin Putra. Once you have dubbed him Indonesian Bruce Campbell you simply cannot see him any other way.

- Gareth Evans is…

▶ Part of jvince's Top 200 Films of All Time

The Good: I tried jotting down notes in my mind while watching the film, but there was just too much awesomeness going on, I lost track. Just go see the damn movie. Everyone, just go.

The Bad: No mere mortal could've possibly made this film because it's fucking perfect. The Raid 2 is a perfect action flick.

The Bottom Line: The Raid possessed a simple yet ingenious concept, but it lacked variation. Leaving the confines of a single building has done wonders for Gareth Evans' breakout franchise. The flaws of Redemption have been addressed in Berandal. The characterization, the cinematography, and most notably the story have all been shored up.…

ok so maybe the Oscars *won't* be the most interminable precisely choreographed hell garbage I force myself to watch this week.

why is the sequel to a film about people climbing a staircase about as clear as LAST YEAR AT MARIENBAD?

listen, the athleticism and camera operating (which is also a display of athleticism) at work here is impressive beyond measure. the go-for-broke ambition is laudable, despite being completely unsupported by narrative purpose and ultimately leading to the film's undoing. but this is AGONY. i can count on 4 imminently severed fingers the number of times in this movie i knew who was fighting who, on 3 fingers the times i knew where, and on the bloody stump where my…

This movie was great but I still liked the first one a bit more.
This sequel had more story, while still having all the cool action scenes. The story was an interesting undercover story but it just made the movie a bit long and it had a couple of pacing issues.
The movie added a lot of characters and I struggled to keep track of them all, which made the movie a bit confusing at some points. Some characters were also too cartoonish, for example the hammer girl and baseball guy, which just felt a bit silly. 
The action scenes were still fast and violent and some scenes like the prison fights and the kitchen fight were better than any fight…

Taking place 2 hours after the events of The Raid, The Raid 2 (also known as The Raid 2: Berandal) continues the quest of Rama as he goes undercover to weed out more corrupt cops & politicians. The story then jumps 2 years ahead where we see him making a steady rise through the hierarchy of Jakarta's most powerful crime syndicate. But when the peace between the underworlds of Indonesia & Japan is disturbed by a new player in town, it sets in motion a chain of events that forces Rama to take them all out once & for all.

Gareth Evans could've easily chosen the same concept that worked so well in the original but he has greater ambitions here as The…

Following the breakout success of the first movie, director Gareth Evans has gone large in every possible way with his sequel. The Raid 2 is no simple retread of the first film, clumsily shoehorning in Rama, the resilient good cop, into yet another claustrophobic encounter against insurmountable odds. Instead, Evans has broadened the canvas to explore the wider criminal world of Jakarta and its ties to a corrupt police force.

I should be applauding the director’s instincts to not simply rest on his laurels and repeat past glories but instead I’ve been left frustrated by his creative choices as we are treated to a flabby action epic devoid of emotional stakes and reliant on a hoary family crime saga we’ve…

The Raid 2 is a very different movie than its predecessor. Where The Raid is focused on a single location and event, The Raid 2 expands its scope into a crime epic.

The fight choreography is amazing and features the fast-paced Silat martial art exceptionally. There's a great car chase with a (famously GIF'd) shot of the camera seemingly floating from one car to the next.

Where the movie lost me was the story. Iko Uwais, the hero-cop of the first movie, is sent undercover to root out corrupt cops in organized crime, yet the movie focuses more on crime family feuds than corruption. The first 30 minutes of the movie also use a somewhat confusing flashback/forward narrative device which…