Serbuan Maut 2
Directed by:
Gareth EvansScreenplay:
Gareth EvansCast:
Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Tio Pakusadewo, Oka Antara, Alex Abbad, Cecep Arif Rahman, Julie Estelle, Very Tri Yulisman, Ryūhei Matsuda, Ken'ichi Endō, 北村一輝 (more)VOD (1)
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Following immediately after the events of THE RAID, Rama (Iko Uwais) is forced to reinvent himself as an undercover cop in order to provide protection for his wife and child. Working for the anti-corruption taskforce led by the one person he can trust, Bunawar, he is given a mission to engage himself as an enforcer for a local mob boss, Bangun. Finding a way in through Bangun's son Uco, Rama must hunt for information linking Bangun with police force corruption. All the while, he harbors a dangerous and personal vendetta for revenge and justice that threatens to consume him - and bring both this mission and the organized crime syndicates crashing down. (official distributor synopsis)
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The first film was the work of an excellent choreographer, part two an excellent director. The first film is a test reel for this heavy stuff. Sure, it has a simpler structure and thus a seemingly stronger push, but where Evans hit the accelerator pedal to floor the after a few minutes (and monotonously hummed after a few minutes), he demonstrates in part two the precise revving of the machine. At the end it gets to a speed where I say quite responsibly: I have not seen anything better, more pampered, more of a catalyst and more brutal in an action film. Kinetic crap that only the third Bourne film can compete with. Evans also turns out to be a good narrator, if not a screenwriter - he works well with the acting material (the return of the man-macaque !!!), delicately pulls the atmosphere of corpse neon sets even in quiet passages and manages to squeeze more from the main character than an elbow harvester. Despite the rather murderous runtime and the very transparent plot, it holds tight and does not let go. The film has very simple but brutally effective emotions under an incredibly badass aesthetic surface. The film hooked me so much that I experienced the kitchen scene with Rama (together and deliciously) physically - for me, it's A Space Odyssey of fight scenes. The Raid 2 it is not just a level plaything, but rather a monstrous and enchanting world, something similar to what Refn tried to do in Only God Forgives. This is a major genre event for me, compared to which the competition is just shaking with digital and wired shame. [95%]
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Great fights were given a well-written story which, despite its immense length, isn’t boring for a minute. Also Iko Uwais isn’t the ultimate crusher and doesn’t win every fight. Crowd fights alternate with shootouts and one-on-one fist fights. Evans has hammers, machetes, aluminum baseball bats, broom handles up his sleeve and pulls them out with the best action - and I mean at least one level better than in part one. Harder and heavier. If it’s at all possible.
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The first film, minus its only flaw (the absence of a plot), equals this. Admittedly, I hesitate to wonder if delivering the plot had to mean a two-and-a-half-hour epic, but overall it works great. The last hour is something that goes against everything I have experienced in cinema so far. The physicality of this spectacle goes beyond the horizons of the common imagination, and Evans has a notch in the form of the best subgenre spectacle. The several times that I involuntarily said "Holy crap!" sum up all the superlatives I can think of in connection with this.
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The success of the first The Raid went to Evans’s head and brought his boundless ambitions to light. These ambitions are not limited to revolutionary depictions of action, but unfortunately also include storytelling. The director has obviously watched Leone and Coppola, so instead of the striking video-game structure of the first instalment, this time he delivers a showy mafia saga in which a third of the runtime is taken up by goons and the rest of the film is importantly narrated and plotted by the bosses. The film tries to placate viewers even in the plot-development passages through emphasis on formalistic stylishness and coolness, but despite the nice images, it’s like bad porn, where the viewer merely waits for the men to shut up so they can get to the action. Though on paper these passages are supposed to add a dramatic element to the action, in practice that element is limited to kitschy pathos in the best case and, in the worst case, a ridiculously strained appendage stretching the runtime. One can now wait with interest as to whether Evans will take a different route in terms of the genre and stylistic direction of the planned third instalment, which would give the whole trilogy an element of experimentation and, mainly, retrospectively justify the choice of the style used in the second instalment. The deviations from the liveliness of the first film seems rather like the unfortunate influence of the growing co-producer, XYZ Films, whose trademark has become superficial fan-service pomposity and a calculated attempt at otherness, resulting in detachment and empty gestures. Therefore, in The Raid 2 we have comic-bookishly stylised characters with special attacks and costumes (Hammer Girl, Baseball Bat Man, Prakoso) who gush pathos and coolness from every pore, but involving them in the effort to make a tense mafia saga only exposes the whole project as a juvenile genre fantasy targeted at hipster movie fans who hide their consumerism and proneness to being manipulated behind their ostentatious rejection of the mainstream. But these are all just the aforementioned appendages or perhaps even concessions made in exchange for the freedom of implementation for the film’s main attraction. Here, a revolutionary mix of contact choreography, computer-generated effects and brilliant formalistic arrangement combines contemporary Western and Eastern action-movie trends into a thrilling whole, much like Matrix did in its day. With the bigger budget brought about by the success of the first instalment, Evans could also afford to take the action a step beyond the relatively cheap fight scenes. Whereas in the first instalment the choreography was worked out by Evans together with the lead actors, Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian, this time the crew included professionals from abroad, led by Hong Kong-based automotive action expert Bruce Law and fight choreographer Larnell Stovall (Undisputed III, Universal Soldier - Day of Reckoning). ___ Update after the second viewing in 2020: Though all of my criticisms still apply, nothing better has yet been made in the action genre in terms of choreography, even though the John Wick franchise gives The Raid 2 a respectable run for its money. But with its combination of physically gifted performers who know how to give and take punches, a director with a feel for action scenes and a refined style and staging ambitions, The Raid 2 has simply achieved the best balance so far.
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There is power in simplicity, or was – last time. The second time around, I don't think Gareth Evans did as well, despite the commendable fact that he went about it in many ways completely differently and didn't want to repeat himself. I wouldn't mind that The Raid 2 is no longer an action flick, but something more, what bothered me the most was that while in the first film all the action was a logical part of the story, so much so that you could that it was actually the story, this time it was as if the unnecessarily grandiose story served only to allow some action to happen, and it didn't matter if it made sense or not. It was just too much, it was overwrought and unnecessarily complicated, until I wondered why on earth everyone didn't shoot each other and had to keep hitting and hitting each other, and sometimes in quite bizarre ways (the girl with the hammers, I didn't understand). The closer it got to the end, the less it interested me.
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