Nervous about keeping his identity under wraps, he receives little help or reassurance from his police supervisor. Rama shows his resourcefulness by making creative use of a broom handle, earning Ucok’s respect and loyalty.Ĭut to two years later, when Rama is ushered upon his release into Bangun’s employ.
It’s also the setting for a massive smackdown when all hell breaks loose in the muddy courtyard after a downpour. The gritty squalor of the prison is the chief visual link with the grubby aesthetic of the first movie. While the cop initially refuses overtures to join the mob scion’s gang, he steps in when Ucok’s life is threatened. In a great kickoff to the fight action, Rama gets Ucok’s attention by single-handedly dispatching the welcome committee with little more than a steel bathroom door. He’s cornered into doing prison time to get close to Ucok ( Arifin Putra), the cocky son of old-school crime boss Bangun ( Tio Pakusodewo), whose syndicate co-exists peacefully with that of his Japanese counterpart, Goto ( Kenichi Endo). That unfortunate combination applies to more than one criminal upstart here, Bejo included.ĭemonstrating that the cops are almost as ruthless as the crooks, Rama is forced to go undercover in an anti-corruption task force, with the understanding that the safety of his wife and child depend on it. Bejo tells Andi that ambition and limitation don’t mix well in the underworld. He gets iced in the opening minutes in a sugarcane field by Bejo ( Alex Abbad), a half-Arab gangster looking to grow his territory. Uwais returns as police officer Rama, but his bad-seed brother, Andi ( Donny Alamsyah), isn’t so lucky.
VIDEO: ‘The Raid 2’ International Trailer Packs a Punch Still, few are likely to complain given the adrenaline rush of Evans’ set pieces and the inventiveness of the bloodletting. It contains echoes of Quentin Tarantino, Nicholas Winding Refn and Takeshi Kitano, with similarities to the latter’s work enhanced by a contingent of Japanese mobsters. There’s also a sensational extended car chase sequence that withstands comparison to anything in the Fast and the Furious franchise.īut though the sheer muscularity of Evans’ direction remains dazzling, The Raid 2 seems less unique. Those include a baseball and bat, a pickaxe, some cool claw daggers and a pair of hammers wielded by a deadly female ( Julie Estelle). But Evans expands the hardware beyond the usual guns and knives, giving some of his assassins their own special tools. Visceral in the extreme, the bravura martial arts mayhem still takes pride of place, choreographed again by lead actor Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, who also appears, though as a different character from last time. That means it sacrifices some of the purity of the first movie, which had its share of weaponry but was rendered exciting and distinctive primarily by its virtuoso assaults of lethal fists and feet on flesh. I don’t know about redemption, but there’s more of pretty much everything in this sequel. Sony Pictures Classics released the exhilarating 2011 original as The Raid: Redemption, and while introducing the second installment at Sundance, Welsh-born Evans said jokingly that it might go out as The Raid 2: More Redemption.