The Raid 2 (2014)

The Raid 2 is more ambitious than the original, with a more complex story and some of the best choreographed and directed action sequences ever made. What more could a hardcore action fan ask for?

Having miraculously recovered from his experiences just three year earlier, our now way more experienced cop “Rama” (Iko Uwais) finds that these thugs were but the tip of the criminal iceberg and that he and his family are now firmly in the sights of the bosses intent of revenge. It seems the only way he can keep them safe is to go undercover and expose himself to a nest of brutal drug dealers and corrupt officials - including some in his own force. So, “Yuda” is born. His task begins in prison and by ingratiating himself with the ambitious “Uco” (Arifin Petra), the rather duplicitous son of one of the nasties who’s sense of honour (and his henchmen) has hitherto kept the peace on the outside, he hopes to discover who is threatening his loved ones. Meantime, there are some changes going on amidst this hostile fraternity that could endanger the fragile familial truces and risk an all-out gang war. The thing about the first “Raid” was the dark, claustrophobic, environment in which our ninja hero did his stuff. This, though, takes their battles out into more open spaces and throws that intensity under a tuk-tuk. There’s boundless athleticism here and the choreography of the combat routines is precise and impressive, but the story is old hat and it suffers fairly early on from a bit of “been there, seen that”. It tries to present us with a plot, but that’s all too easily subsumed into the repetitive action scenes that make these martial arts look as menacing as a pas-de-deux in bloodstained Levi’s. It’s also far, far, too long as there’s such an inevitability about the whole thing that it could lose an hour and cut to the chase much sooner. Uwais is a charismatic man and the direction gets us up close and personal with the fighting, but once you’ve seen a guy smashed against a wall, or a room full of furniture destroyed for the fifth time, it all starts to get dull. Not a patch on the 2011 original, sorry.