Review of The Raid 2 (2014) by Jean-Philippe G — 08 Jul 2014

The Raid: Redemption was one of the most incredibly awesome action movies that I had ever seen, but The Raid 2 completely and utterly eviscerates the first film with a baseball bat and a couple of hammers. From the very first action sequence, I was thinking to myself "This is the best action sequence I've ever seen," and every consecutive action scene that followed just got better, and more violent than the previous one. There are so many different kinds of action sequences, as well. You want the best car chase ever filmed? Here you go. You want the best prison riot scene ever? Got you covered. Do you want to see a dude with a baseball bat and a chick with a hammer beat the unholy shit out of countless goons? What is this, amateur hour? Of course, we got all that and then some!

The Raid 2 not only ups the ante in terms of the action sequences, but it also has a better grasp on story and characters than the first film did. Rama isn't just some generic, faceless hero like he was in the first film. I actually cared about him and his family this time, which is more than I can say for the first film. The villains were much more memorable and threatening than the one in the first. My favorites were Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl. (Yes, those are actually their characters' names on IMDB.) The story this time isn't just, "Oh, well now we have to go up a bigger building". It's actually a lot like The Departed, only with much better action scenes.

I was so enraptured by The Raid 2 that I didn't even notice that I was 10 minutes late for work, so I had to rush out after the kitchen fight. So I still haven't seen the last 10 or so minutes of the movie yet, so I don't know if it completely jumps the shark in the last 10 minutes, but even if this movie physically came to life and bit both of my arms off, I still would have given it 5/5 stars. The Raid 3, let's see what you got now.

UPDATE: Finally finished the movie. Yep, still 5/5!