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How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 28 March 2014
This article is a review of THE RAID 2. |
“You want out, you put them down,” Eka (Oka Antara) to Rama (Iko Uwais)
Getting a pick-axe to the head, getting a hammer to the face, getting your face shot-off by a pump-action shotgun, a baseball bat to the head, throats slit by a Stanley knife; some examples of the brutal variety of deaths in an extraordinary martial arts crime epic. SERPICO meets ENTER THE DRAGON meets OUTRAGE BEYOND.
Fans of THE RAID (2011) – and who isn’t right? – A shot out of the blue action flick that wowed with its economy and bravura combat choreography (mixing guns, sidearm batons, knives, machetes and fists/feet/forearms/legs), has had the level of craft upped, to an at times jaw-dropping effect. Writer-director Gareth Evans has made THE GODFATHER: PART II of martial arts movies. Instead of retreading ground already honed, the universe has been expanded and the story taken in a different direction.
Getting a pick-axe to the head, getting a hammer to the face, getting your face shot-off by a pump-action shotgun, a baseball bat to the head, throats slit by a Stanley knife; some examples of the brutal variety of deaths in an extraordinary martial arts crime epic. SERPICO meets ENTER THE DRAGON meets OUTRAGE BEYOND.
Fans of THE RAID (2011) – and who isn’t right? – A shot out of the blue action flick that wowed with its economy and bravura combat choreography (mixing guns, sidearm batons, knives, machetes and fists/feet/forearms/legs), has had the level of craft upped, to an at times jaw-dropping effect. Writer-director Gareth Evans has made THE GODFATHER: PART II of martial arts movies. Instead of retreading ground already honed, the universe has been expanded and the story taken in a different direction.
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Quick re-cap: A rookie S.W.A.T. team went into a Jakarta high-rise block, overrun with criminals, to arrest kingpin, Tama (Ray Sahetapy). Whittled down to one man, the cops are eviscerated. Amid the carnage, a conspiracy is unearthed involving senior police officers. Rama, an honourable family man, and deadly law enforcer, prevails. THE RAID 2 commences within hours after its predecessor, cutting to a field where dust puffs in the distance as cars pull into view. Gone is the claustrophobic fear; in its place is a Stanley Kubrick/David Fincher existential terror, where one man is pitted against overwhelming odds. As THE RAID referenced the likes of DIE HARD and HARD BOILED, THE RAID 2 has its own echoes. Scorsese is the first one, CASINO to be precise. One of Rama’s family is taken out in a country lane, a make-shift burial awaits, and is executed by mob boss on the rise, Bejo (Alex Abbad). Meanwhile, Rama is recruited by Bunawar (Cok Simbara), head of a small unit tasked to weed out dishonest police. Rooting out the double-dealing has the same feeling as when Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), in TV show ALIAS, is shown a diagram of the formidable number of associates involved in heinous activity who must be stopped. The conspiracy in THE RAID 2 goes all the way up to the political class.
Chopping up the timeline dominates the first half-an-hour, packing in backstory so the next two hours can breathe, well, as much as the audience is able to inhale-exhale what with the pervasive atmosphere of dread. Rama must go all Johnny Depp in DONNIE BRASCO and infiltrate the dominant crime organisation in the city, led by Bangun (Tio Pakusodewo); not to build a case against them, just to find out who the dodgy cops are. To do that, the rest of Rama’s family are moved away for their protection, Rama’s identity is changed, and he is sent to prison to become best buds with Bangun’s son Uco (Arifin Putra), a ruthlessly ambitious sociopath. THE RAID was almost real time in its length; THE RAID 2 spans years.
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Perfection, so rare, is not here quite. Rama is characterless in the same way as Captain America and Superman, there to epitomise audience perception of wholehearted goodness. Also, some of the goons seem to be waiting for their turn to have the cr*p kicked out of them (rather than bundling their target, but that makes for a boring experience to witness) – contrast KILL BILL: VOLUME I for brawling on an unprecedented scale (admittedly using swords, allowing for easier multiple assailants). Don’t get us wrong, the rumpuses (rumpi?) astound.
There are actually only two action sequences in the first 45 minutes, that’s how seriously the director has taken the narrative development. Having said that, the first one involves a prison toilet cubicle, 1 versus 15. A penitentiary yard melee, like you’ve never seen, is the second. Anyone who has watched Evans’ segment in V/H/S/2 will understand the foreboding he can bring; that coupled with striking camera work, and some of the most amazing fisticuffs so far put to film, make for a gripping experience – made truly exhilarating by the triptych of henchmen/henchwoman: “Hammer Girl” (Julie Estelle), “Baseball Bat Man” (Very Tri Yulisman) and “The Assassin” (Cecep Arif Rahman). The climax is a fight for the ages – it had me almost palpitate, and induce a headache from sheer excitement – is that a new medical condition?
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