Review of The Raid 2 (2014) by Noah C — 11 Jul 2014

There will always be a special place in my heart for the 70's kung fu films which contained bad English dubbing and cheesy storylines yet never refused to attack audience's senses with bombastic action sequences that required skill and expert timing to pull off.

Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan revolutionized the genre with their own physical commitment to their martial arts; with Chan breaking almost every bone in his body, just to perfectly enhance the pictures quality.

Now In the current era of film one of the prime examples of "cool" fight scenes is fights such as Neo against agent Smith. While visually impressive, obviously almost the entire fight was achieved with computer generated effects and wires which instantly diminishes the admiration I can give to that film for the effort simply is not there.

However, in 2011 director Gareth Evans brought to movie audiences everywhere a small independent film, made with just $1.1 million, The Raid: Redemption. While the miniscule budget certainly affected the look of the film it in no way hindered the actual action itself, which required more thought and creativity from the entire film crew.

Iko Uwais absolutely nailed all of his matial arts fights and overall did a stellar job. My only problem with that film was the monotony of some of the fights due to all of them taking place in the same location and the uninvolved story that was compacted with dozens of clichés.

Three years later Evans is back with The Raid 2: Berendal which absolutely annihilates the first film in every single way for not only is The Raid 2 one of the best films of 2014 but it has now taken the top spot for my favorite action film of all time edging out Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

It's almost as if Gareth Evans read my review for his previous film and corrected every fault in the film that detracted me from the experience. Evans fixed my first problem being the lousy story, by actually creating a very compelling undercover cop, rival family, godfather type narrative that finds our main hero Rama stuck right in the middle of.

Every fight felt integral to the plot this time around and had real suspense rather than just extending the run time like the previous film. Monotony also dies with this new film for Rama is constantly moving from different locations; to a prison to a karaoke club to a highway to a Bejo's hide out, there is an insane amount of locational and chorographical variety.

I cannot find a single thing wrong with this picture which usually never happens to me and in fact this film being 2hr 30min long was indeed too short for this movie; I actually wish the film was 3hr 30min long, I just didn't want this movie to end! Instead of reflecting on the films negatives I will state my favorite fight scene in the film, that being when Rama is facing four of Uco's men inside a very small car with dynamic chorography, Evans you are truly a master director to pull that off with such style.

The Raid 2: Berendal is one of the best action films ever made for it combines masterful fight scenes with a great story which is a formula hard to pull off in the action genre. Iko Uwais is our generations new Bruce Lee and Gareth Evans is our generations John Woo for this film is simply a perfect movie.