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 The Raid 2 2014 1⁄2

SilentDawn’s review:

Now is the time. The time to review an experience that will be

unmatched for the rest of the year. I've thought long and hard about

this, and it's definitive. The Raid 2 is the greatest action film ever

made. Don't think so? Name one film that has a fulfilling story,

interesting and unique characters, extreme violence, beautiful and

stunning cinematography, and easily the greatest action scenes EVERin a film. That's right, THE GREATEST. My mind was going in so many

directions after my first viewing, and now that I let myself settle down

(somewhat), I will try to review one of the most accomplished films in

the last 10 years. And here 

we go....... 

The Awesome: From the beautiful and magically composed opening

shot, to the cliffhanger that sent shock- waves up my body, The Raid 2

is an absolute masterwork. I will try to separate this review into

multiple paragraphs, because there is much to talk about. 

First, the story has been branched out and expanded, basically telling

the audience from the first 10 minutes that there is a much bigger

universe than Rama thought from the first film. The gangster world in

The Raid 2 feels comic-bookish in a way, adding stylized villains andhaving the blood as red as can be. The story is very Infernal Affairs/

Departed-esque, but it works extremely well on its own, making sure

that you don't lose interest until the next action sequence. All of the

acting and characters in this film work beautifully into the overall

tapestry of the story, with many actors having their time to shine. You

actually are invested with these characters, and you feel every blow

when the action hits. 

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The direction by Gareth Evans is absolutely impeccable. It's a

directional accomplishment so great that I could honestly see him

being nominated for an Oscar. Now, I don't think the Academy would

nominate a film of this nature, and that makes me angry. The wide-

shots, composed with an elegance that you rarely see until the fall

movie seasons, show true maturation as a film-maker. The

cinematography is awe-inspiring, having rich and vibrant colors pop

out in the appropriate spots. Night-clubs have never looked so inviting

and sleazy at the same time. I also love Evan's mature approach to the

material. He understands that violence is a consequence to this darkand disturbing world, and he never uses it in an overly-campy way.

Sure, there are moments where he encourages the audience to laugh

and freak out in disbelieve, but those sections are earned. He knows

when to cut away, or when to show all of the impact in all its bloody

glory. Also, an abundance of poetic and tender moments provide some

scenes that will stick with me for a long time.  

Now, last but not least, the action sequences. My word. Wow. Amazing.

Spectacular. Stunning. Fast. Intense. Graphic. Insane. Crazy. In The Raid

2, you will see the greatest action sequences of all time. As a huge fan

of martial arts and action cinema, I don't say that lightly. They are so

impressively choreographed, shot so the audience can SEE

EVERYTHING, and full to the brim of "OHHHHH" moments. I can

honestly spend another two paragraphs writing about the actionsequences, but I wouldn't do them justice.  

The Terrible: If you went in expecting a story structure comparable to

the first Raid, then you might be lukewarm to parts of this. The Raid 2

takes its time to tell its story, because otherwise, your mind wouldn't

be able to handle the pure awesomeness in every frame. Like I said

though, the story isn't just filler, but a good crime story. 

Overall, The Raid 2 is the greatest action film ever made. From the

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fantastic characters, to the beautiful direction and cinematography,

and of course the action sequences; The Raid 2 tops the first film in

every aspect.  

Note: I will be seeing it again soon, and I will post a spoiler review

writing about my favorite parts in detail.

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brand of hyper-violent cinema where you truly wonder how these lean,

elastic-bodied Indonesian men come out alive. This time there’s also a

female character, Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), who would make

Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman proud.

In Sundance I was on my own mission to discover what all the fuss was

about. Having interviewed Quentin Tarantino and Jackie Chan many

times over the years, I was well aware that both men are funny and

hyper- active as well as being big talkers—attributes they instil in their

films. Evans, who likewise makes his films funny, takes the violencefurther into genre territory, though does it with great aplomb.

Not unlike the fantasy-loving Guillermo del Toro, a younger splatter-

adoring Peter Jackson or British Sightseersdirector Ben Wheatley,

Evans is a chubby, cherub-faced figure with a gift of the gab and a wild

Welsh sense of humour. Unlike del Toro and Jackson, he does not

resemble a hobbit and is toweringly tall. The other thing he shareswith the aforementioned filmmakers is a strong marriage to a film

collaborator wife, Rangga Maya Barack-Evans, who is Indonesian-

 Japanese.

When in 2007 she suggested they go to Indonesia, Evans, who had

watched “tonnes and tonnes of martial arts movies over and over as a

child—my dad loved Jackie Chan”—got a job directing the documentaryLand of Moving Shadows: The Mystic Arts of Indonesia, Pencak Silat .

While making the movie his addiction to silat kicked in.

Iko Uwais, the star of his subsequent three features, Merantau, The

Raid and The Raid 2 (Berandal , the Indonesian title, means thug), was

working as a delivery man at a phone company when they first met.

Uwais may subject himself to a comical level of abuse in Evans’ films,

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though he largely has himself to blame, as he is also the fight scene

choreographer.

In The Raid 2, Evans wanted to broaden the drama to create more of astoryline and to not just rely on the action. “I wanted to challenge

myself more, to call on Iko’s own life experiences as a new father, to

call on the psychology and build up anticipation. In my opinion, the

best scene in the movie is when Rama calls his wife at home.”

The Raid 2 pretty much picks up where The Raid ended, though within

the first five minutes almost all the surviving characters are killed off—

so Evans can start all over again. The story follows the charismatic

Detective Rama (Uwais) over a far longer period as he goes undercover,

ultimately serving a two-year prison sentence to get to the top of the

police corruption ring by making contact with Uco (Arifin Putra), the

crime boss’s son. Then he lets loose on the streets of Jakarta.

In The Raid 2, Evans says he wanted to expand the action too, by

making it different and varied and using numerous locations “to avoid

fight fatigue”. As usual, the scenes are mind-boggling. While critics

have praised the film’s car chase as the best and certainly the most

intricate ever filmed, the prison riot proved the most exhausting.

“We were in the mud for eight days straight,” Evans recalls. “I lost apair of shoes and I cut my foot a little bit as well. Mud would splash on

the camera lens in an otherwise perfect take.” Evans hesitates for a

moment and reconsiders. “But the car chase was a bitch.”

For the first time, the director, writer and editor wanted to explore

using car stunts. He aimed to create “a seamless sense of motion”

without the budget of a Fast & Furious movie. Employing the help of

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Bruce Law’s car stunt team from Hong Kong, Evans had his

cinematographers changing cameras and even passing a camera

through a hole in the car floor as it sped along. Nor does Rama stay

still, as he jumps off the back of an SUV onto a sedan while the two cars

are in motion and he beats up the bad guys inside the car, of course.  

Evans: “My focus on those scenes was more on what happens to the

bodies inside the car when their car gets hit, which gives a unique

selling point to me and made it different from things what we’ve

seen." 

Initially planned at seven hours, the car chase took twice as long tofilm than expected. (The film took 132 days to shoot, 26 days longer

than initially projected. The entirety of Dallas Buyers Club was shot in

25 days.) 

“Every day we turned up on set at 4am to prepare to start shooting at

6.30am. But it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a permit in Indonesia, they

can shut you down. The police can open up the streets at 9am so pretty

much

every single day we lost 50 percent of our shooting time.”

Then there was the face-off in the kitchen, shot with vivid shades of

 John Woo. “That was 10 days of me sitting by the monitor telling them

to punch each other harder and stuff like that,” Evans recalls matter-of-

factly. “We took about a month and a half just designing it and the

guys came up with all these different movements and practiced them

for months before we shot seven minutes of unrelenting violence.”

Did anyone get hurt on the film? “We had a few ropey moments but

nothing was really that bad. One guy had a concussion that we were

worried about at first, but when we took him to hospital, he was okay.

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It was the first day of action scenes and Iko changed the choreography

at the last minute. The guy was supposed to get pulled down on the

table but I think he came down too low and instead of hitting the nice

cushioned top part of the table, he cracked his ribs against the hard

wood on the side. I felt bad for the guy but he came back and actually

participated in the prison riot.”

Evans calls himself “a disgusting control freak”, who clearly suffers for

his art too. It’s perhaps understandable that he wants to do everything

on his films, as he knows exactly what he wants. After viewing theinventive ways his Indonesian fighters maim and kill, it’s certainly hard

to describe.

“When we design the fight scenes we shoot a video storyboard in pre-

production and I’m so involved in choosing those shots and the edits

of that sequence to get the fight scene right. If it doesn’t match the

tone of the fight scene going into the drama then maybe I feel likesomething’s quite wrong. Me and Matt [cinematographer Matt

Flannery] go through all the shot lists very specifically and I can almost

see the edit while we’re figuring out the shot lists.”

Currently, Evans is producing Killers director Timo Tjahjanto’s The Night

Comes for Us with rising Indonesian action star Estelle in Jakarta.

(Killers also premiered in Sundance.) Then Evans plans to make twofilms outside of Indonesia—“movies with a mid-range budget level so I

can maintain control while I’m still figuring myself out as a

filmmaker”—before filming the third Raid instalment in Indonesia to

close off his trilogy.

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 THE RAID 2

CinematographyThe team focused its effort on balancing the old and the new. They

wanted to make sure the audience recognized the familiar setting from

the original, while exploring new parts of this environment. The sequel

focuses on of Rama entering Jakarta's underworld, where the stakes

are higher. The sequel was shot in cinemascope in order to provide a

wider frame and give the story a more epic feel. The photography alsoexplored a wider range of the color palette, using different lighting for

each character. The film opens with similar tones as the first one and

shifts as Rama enters the criminal organization.

Shooting the film has been a learning experience for the whole team.

On MERANTAU, the team learned to shoot martial arts. On THE RAID:

REDEMPTION, they learned to shoot gunfights. And on THE RAID 2 theywent one step further, adding car chases to the mix.  

On MERANTAU we felt we were focusing on the narrative drama

scenes. For the action scenes, the takes were too long. We learned from

that and fixed things on THE RAID: REDEMPTION. THE RAID:

REDEMPTION had a majority of action scenes. We got to play a lot with

camera angles and fluidity. Finding a new way to shoot action scenes.

THE RAID 2 is a much bigger project. What we chose to do is a

combination of the two elements we learned from MERANTAU and THE

RAID: REDEMPTION: dynamic, edgy and fluid camera movements,

while at the same time knowing when to go for more classical and

sophisticated compositions (when to use jimmy jib, steady cams and

dolly track).Combining those two different styles was an interesting

challenge in that respect. (Gareth)

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Because this was the first time a car chase of this scale was shot in

Indonesia, a lot of time was spent on logistics. Unlike places like Hong

Kong or the UK, where they have been shooting car chases for years,

Indonesia did not have a particular set-up for this. The production team

had to build the structure itself to achieve specific shots:

"We had to have a shoot from the inside of one car going down a

highway with the camera moving to another car straight away, then

have the back window to blown out for the camera to follow through

the back window and out again. To do that, we discussed differentcombinations of computer-generated imagery, visual effects, green

screens and so on. After a long discussion, we felt like we would be

technically limited if we were to use too many special effects. In the

end we decided to do it for real, meaning moving the camera from one

camera operator to the other. This is something we had done on THE

RAID: REDEMPTION when we went through a hole on the floor. It was

done in a controlled environment and the only issue was the personpassing the camera to another. But the difficulty here was to pass the

camera between moving cars on a highway. It was risky shot, but

thankfully after a number of takes it was done well". (Evans)

Camera moves were carefully integrated into the martial arts

choreography. The fighters' moves are choreographed to the slightest

detail, and so are camera movements. Camera angles are designed

before

the shoot, so it never feels like the camera interferes with the action. A

constant mantra during shooting was to highlight the actors'

performances. 

"The brothel scene is one of my favorite shots, when a character gets

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thrown through a window. The camera starts low on the ground and

follows him through his jump. It ends up getting upside down. As he

rolls over to get up, the camera rolls with him and swings around to

catch Uwais jumping through a window. It comes to a close-up of his

feet and then follows him. It was a complicated shot. What makes it

even harder is that we had to do this without rigging. We had two

camera operators controlling the camera. It's not just about getting the

movement right. You also have to clear the path or we would have

seen one of the camera operators at some point in that scene. Overall

it was a great team effort to get it executed correctly." (Evans).

Review: 'The Raid 2' Is One of the Great Action Films of Recent

Memory"The Raid 2" is grander and superior to its predecessor

in every conceivable way.

When the Indonesian martial arts movie "The Raid: Redemption"

began making the rounds at film festivals back in 2011, it gainedinstant popularity for its frenetic choreography, and became an

impressive calling card for Welsh director Gareth Evans.

Simultaneously bruising and taut, it was always going to be a tough

act to follow — making it all the more beguiling that its sequel, "The

Raid 2: Berandal," is grander and superior in every conceivable way.

While its predecessor used John Carpenter's "Assault on Precinct 13"as a reference point, "The Raid 2" pulsates with countless other

influences — "Yojimbo," "The Godfather," "Infernal Affairs" – and

contains a finale that not so much mirrors but perfects Bruce Lee's

unfinished masterpiece "Game of Death." This is a feat that raises the

bar for modern action filmmaking, and while claims of its stature as

greatest action film of all time might sound premature, they aren't

unwarranted. 

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"The Raid 2" picks up hours after the first installment. Our hero Rama

(Iko Uwais), his wounds sustained from an army of thugs still fresh, is

brought before a special squad keen on cleansing the city of the

reigning mafia as well as the police force that aids and abets them. It

turns out that the crime lord Rama helped take down in "The Raid:

Redemption" was but one midlevel spider amongst a massive web of

criminality. In exchange for his family’s protection from these dark

forces, Rama is asked to go undercover into the belly of the beast.

Exhausted and disillusioned by his ordeal, he initially refuses, but

accepts the task when he considers the prospects of personalvengeance. His mission calls for him to land in prison for a few months

in order to befriend the incarcerated dark prince of the mob, Ucok.

Almost immediately, Rama realizes that this quest will become much

more complicated than that.  

Evans populates this epic with a rogues' gallery of larger than life

villains, each of them distinctive and fittingly despicable. Controlling

the city are two crime lords: The local syndicate lead by the all-powerful

Bangun, and the refined Goto, who exerts an equally iron fist from

 Japan. Ucok (Arifin Putra, sporting classic movie star looks), Bangun’s

son and the man with whom Rama must ingratiate himself, is a

petulant king-in-waiting all too eager to inherent his father’s crown, his

sense of entitlement only matched by his ruthlessness. On the

periphery is the ambitious upstart Bejo, whose arsenal includes a trioof assassins so outlandish they could comfortably reside on the pages

of the wackiest of mangas. In a welcome piece of stunt casting, Yayan

Ruhian (who played Mad Dog in the first installment) returns,

reincarnated as another unstoppable berserker named Prakoso. 

Undoubtedly the most astonishing aspect of "The Raid 2" are its action

set pieces, which create the impression that "The Raid: Redemption"

was just a warm up. Each one is preceded by a meticulously observed

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build up: We watch as some of the greatest martial artists in the world

snap, gouge, and pummel every component of each other's anatomy

with whatever object is at hand. The violence is jaw-dropping, with

every evisceration leaving a traumatic reverberation in its wake, only to

be outdone by the next gruesome strike. Evans (who not only directed

but edited the film as well) catapults himself to the forefront of action

directors, systematically tackling and outdoing just about every

benchmark for combat in the pantheon. A mud-soaked brawl on a

prison yard early in the film makes the opening turf battle of "Gangs of

New York" look cute in comparison. A car chase sequence is sodizzyingly inventive it would send Jason Bourne spinning off of the

pavement. Rama's kitchen-set showdown with Bejo’s most lethal

henchman ranks among the greatest one-on-one fight sequences in

recent memory. 

This is not to suggest that the film’s pleasures exist only when the fists

swing. Evans constructs an elegant narrative around the carnage,

extrapolating a labyrinthine plot from the first film's spare scenario

and handling the intrigue with a crystalline clarity. Iko Uwais, with his

haunted eyes and no-bullshit dignity, once again portrays Rama as a

decent man who slowly loses himself to the barbaric world he has

become submerged in. 

Still, Evans risks losing track of Rama's personal stakes in this

expansive tale of ambition and betrayal, only to find him roaring backto the forefront in the film's third act. Arifin Putra also does great work

as Ucok, his performance suggesting a deep-seated insecurity that

comes close to eliciting sympathy for an otherwise monstrous

character. However, the true stars of the film are Evans, his two

cinematographers and three

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composers — the virtuosic camerawork and nerve-stabbing score make

for a rapturous viewing experience. Indeed, if "The Raid: Redemption"

was a thrashing drum solo, its sequel is the opulent symphony where

every instrument is played with fevered inspiration. 

Criticwire Grade: A

HOW WILL IT PLAY? Sony Pictures Classics opens the film in New York

and Los this Friday. Strong word of mouth is likely to yield a much

larger haul than the first installment. The two-and-a-half hour running

time and excessive violence may provide a deterrent for someaudiences, but "The Raid 2" should gradually find its audiences as it

opens across several markets in the coming weeks..

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