The Raid 2

longhalloween

e_e wrote: »

Aww that bit gave me goosebumps. A wonderfully ethereal touch and a nice bit of serenity right in the middle of 2 fight scenes.

Didn't notice too much shaky cam myself outside of the big prison set-piece. It sort of worked for me there though, fits into the messiness of the scene and sorta reminded me of Saving Private Ryan's opening sequence. Felt like I was being flung around along with the actors.

It was a bit strange, as there was no snow in the previous scene where Rama was listening on the conversation.

Maybe the weather is temperamental in Jakarta.

johnny_ultimate

longhalloween wrote: »

It was a bit strange, as there was no snow in the previous scene where Rama was listening on the conversation.

Maybe the weather is temperamental in Jakarta.

Yeah, that's what bothered me: it didn't fit with any of the scenes surrounding it, along with scenes like the fishing scene indicating that the weather was otherwise perfectly fine. Suddenly we're in the depths of winter for a single scene! No doubt it looks good (and I'm sure for many that's the only excuse needed), but it highlighted IMO a lack of consistent world building. A lot of the settings often felt really artificial where there was a more natural progression through the previous film's grimy tower block.

As for the mud scene, no doubt it was a nightmare to film and that some degree of camera trickery was necessary. Shaky cam is even justified as a technique to get right into the midst of it. But to me Evans merely overcompensated, and I really found it wasted or underemphasised so much of the extravagant choreography. There's excessive shaky cam in a lot of the fights too - it seems to settle down during the second half, or maybe I got more used to it - but the mud scene is worth highlighting IMO as it's already a little tricky to keep track of what's important as everyone becomes mud covered. The ever moving camera simply made it significantly less coherent.

S.M.B.

Evans should be commended for his ambition but it's also just as necessary to identify and criticise his shortcomings.

The jail yard seen is a perfect example. He's on the record as saying that it was a nightmare to shoot. In hindsight does that mean that he should have gone with a more achievable/realistic vision for that scene? Maybe, maybe not?

The increase in the movies scale and scope is also something that's highly commendable but the execution is by no means flawless. Maybe he could have benefited from having a different set of eyes in the editing room. Large amounts of time are given to certain characters and story lines which don't really pay off in any way.

My main issue with the movie is a result of the over complex yet incredibly familiar story line. I feel like there's an attempt to ad a certain weight to the happenings which leads to a very inconsistent tone throughout the movie.

Ash.J.Williams

S.M.B. wrote: »

Evans should be commended for his ambition but it's also just as necessary to identify and criticise his shortcomings.

The jail yard seen is a perfect example. He's on the record as saying that it was a nightmare to shoot. In hindsight does that mean that he should have gone with a more achievable/realistic vision for that scene? Maybe, maybe not?

The increase in the movies scale and scope is also something that's highly commendable but the execution is by no means flawless. Maybe he could have benefited from having a different set of eyes in the editing room. Large amounts of time are given to certain characters and story lines which don't really pay off in any way.

My main issue with the movie is a result of the over complex yet incredibly familiar story line. I feel like there's an attempt to ad a certain weight to the happenings which leads to a very inconsistent tone throughout the movie.

certain things were left open in the film to make way for The raid 3, which branches off from somewhere IN the raid 2

johnny_ultimate

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

certain things were left open in the film to make way for The raid 3, which branches off from somewhere IN the raid 2

Well there's only going to be a limited opportunity in a sequel to further develop a lot of the underdeveloped characters, since most of them have been 'retired' in no uncertain terms :pac: I did like the 'cliffhanger', if you could call it that - it leaves some strands open, but still feels like a satisfying conclusion to this film. It's certainly not 'incomplete'. However, I'd completely agree with S.M.B. that a lot of time is spent with characters, and yet they feel wasted. When

Eka was suddenly highlighted

as a character of major importance, it felt jarring as he'd effectively been a non-entity up until that point. There's hints of the interesting internal conflicts going on inside Rama, but there's nothing but a bare minimum of an attempt to flesh that out.

Uco is a weak antagonist

, with murky motivations and characterisation. Hammer Girl and Baseball Guy feel particularly underutilised -

their final battle with Rama

would feel far weightier if we'd even had a scene or two more to develop their supposed partnership.

All this, yet the film does spend something close to a majority of its running time devoted to plot and characters. It's not hard to imagine that the story would have been engaging if Evans had have spent less time fabricating convoluted gangster politics, and more time defining and exploring his characters.

e_e

Even better on a second viewing for me. The story seemed to flow a lot smoother and I wasn't as impatient about the non-action scenes, knowing that I was never more than 5 or 10 minutes away from some of the immense choreography again. I love how it bucks the modern action movie trend of laying all its cards on the table within 5 minutes and then having nowhere else to go too.

This is a film that is full of so many surprises and there's cumulative effect to each successive action scene that is just joyous to watch. On both watches I was starting to doubt the movie about an hour in thinking "yeah it's well done enough, but I'm not really feeling it yet" only for it to completely escalate in an amazing way in that second half.

Also I have to leap to defend the snow scene again, mainly because on this watch I realized that there was never an outside establishing shot of

the nightclub

so we're really never certain the time taken between that and the prior scene. It's such a minor element of the movie but I love the brief bit of attention to the visual aesthetic (especially when the first movie was kinda samey in terms of cinematography), really shows how immersed Evans get in so many of the details.

longhalloween

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Hammer Girl and Baseball Guy feel particularly underutilised -

their final battle with Rama

would feel far weightier if we'd even had a scene or two more to develop their supposed partnership.

According to Wiki they're siblings, but I don't remember that mentioned in the film.

Potential-Monke

I'm annoyed. The only cinema in Waterford (Odeon) is not showing it, confirmed by email. The closest one is Mahon Point in Cork! Have to do a day trip at the weekend to see it, and knowing my luck it'll be gone from the cinema then! Ragin'!

ancapailldorcha

Potential-Monke wrote: »

I'm annoyed. The only cinema in Waterford (Odeon) is not showing it, confirmed by email. The closest one is Mahon Point in Cork! Have to do a day trip at the weekend to see it, and knowing my luck it'll be gone from the cinema then! Ragin'!

It's only just out. You've a few weeks left I would think.

S.M.B.

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Well there's only going to be a limited opportunity in a sequel to further develop a lot of the underdeveloped characters, since most of them have been 'retired' in no uncertain terms :pac: I did like the 'cliffhanger', if you could call it that - it leaves some strands open, but still feels like a satisfying conclusion to this film. It's certainly not 'incomplete'. However, I'd completely agree with S.M.B. that a lot of time is spent with characters, and yet they feel wasted. When

Eka was suddenly highlighted

as a character of major importance, it felt jarring as he'd effectively been a non-entity up until that point. There's hints of the interesting internal conflicts going on inside Rama, but there's nothing but a bare minimum of an attempt to flesh that out.

Uco is a weak antagonist

, with murky motivations and characterisation. Hammer Girl and Baseball Guy feel particularly underutilised -

their final battle with Rama

would feel far weightier if we'd even had a scene or two more to develop their supposed partnership.

All this, yet the film does spend something close to a majority of its running time devoted to plot and characters. It's not hard to imagine that the story would have been engaging if Evans had have spent less time fabricating convoluted gangster politics, and more time defining and exploring his characters.

Agree with all of the above and I don't think you've even touched on the biggest offender,

Prakoso, a character who in the grand scheme of things is no more than a minor plot device, is given a sizeable chunk of screen time only to be broadly painted as some tortured hench/family man. His (ultimately meaningless) introduction and death could have been replaced with a much more efficient plot device resulting in more time to flesh out the Hammer Girl/Baseball Guy characters

longhalloween

S.M.B. wrote: »

Agree with all of the above and I don't think you've even touched on the biggest offender[/SPOILER]

Yep, he doesn't contribute at all to the plot and his family backstory is pointless. Having him played by the same actor who played Mad Dog in Raid 1 is confusing (even though he is a badass and choreographed the fight scenes)

e_e

longhalloween wrote: »

he doesn't contribute at all to the plot.

He does though.

His assassination is what drives Uco to team up with Bejo and kick off the gang war.

longhalloween

e_e wrote: »

He does though.

His assassination is what drives Uco to team up with Bejo and kick off the gang war.

Nope

After Koso's death Bangun accepts responsibility for all the violence. Uco had already teamed up with Bejo, as it was Bejo's assassin that finished Koso off. It takes 3 more deaths to actually start the war.
And what was the 5 minutes chat with his estranged wife all about? Are we meant to care for him?

The point is the plot labours too much on Koso, when he has a relatively minor role. I think the role was created for the actor for all the choreography work he did in Raid 1&2, rather than out of need for the character.

e_e

Fair enough, got the ordering slightly off there but I do think that event is a big instigator in the gang war all the same.

I disagree that it lingers on him though. More like 2 or 3 scenes and I doubt the restaurant part is half as long as you say. I appreciate the little touches of backstory that the film takes in that regard. His whole screen time is 10 minutes at most and makes the film a little richer in having some pathos too.

Looper007

Got to say, this shows Hollywood how you can do action cinema and not dumb it down for your audience. I probably give this the nod over the first one, and I really loved the first movie. Iko Uwais really is a rootable hero, you can't help but cheer for him. Something lacking in Hollywood leading men these guys. I always love he doesn't come out Unscathed, a bit why Jackie Chan is awesome (well in his Hong Kong pomp in the early 80's) he never did a Bruce Lee, a kick everyone's ass but rather he had to battle his way through while getting his ass kicked.

My god there are some out of this world action scenes that put the Hollywood blockbusters to shame

The Jail yard mud bath fight reminds you of Akira Kurosawa but is brutal as hell, The Scene on the train with Hammer girl is brutal too, The car chase as David Morrissey said on his guest stint on Simon Mayo said was the best car chase scene since the French Connection and the fight in the car was action cinema at it's best and the last half hour was awesome especially the fight in the kitchen, which got cheers in the screening I was at

. Acting honours go to Yayan Ruhian , the ass kicking villain of the first film but a far more tragic character in this and even better for it, a man who lost his family but as he says "he's not smart" to live another life but as down and out hitman the scene

His last stand as he's betrayed by his bosses son, is actually one of more moving deaths you see in action cinema

.

Alex Abbad as Bejo is a interesting villain a sickly guy who clearly who uses his smarts and Hammer Girl, a mute and blind girl and her baseball bat using brother are villains Tarantino would have been proud of although one of my quips is they are so under used. Arifin Putra as Uco, plays the scorned gangster son brilliantly and

The throat cutting scene when Bejo tells him more information as he cuts another man's throat is pretty stomach turning

.

Another character I liked was Donny Alamsyah's Andi

A undercover cop that actually end up loving the dark side was a interesting take on a undercover cop

. I have to say the 2 and half hours passed by nicely, although I found the first 15 minutes dragged a little. But the bathroom fight onwards it kept on topping itself with every action set piece.

Matt Flannery and Dimas Imas Subhonoe cinematography is amazing. the editing by Gareth Evans is tight and his direction amazing. He's the best director of action cinema since John Woo Hong Kong masterpieces. My film of the year so far and it's going to be hard to top it.

Looper007

SherlockWatson wrote: »

Have people here seen Ong Bak and the protector?


Tony Jaa is in them, brutal action like The raid.

I loved Ong Bak but loved The Protector even more ( A transsexual baddie and a fight scene that has no edits that goes floor to floor is amazing) but they are nowhere as violent as The Raid films plus Iko Uwais is far more likeable lead for me.

Warper

I just have to come back in say i love this movie - absolute WOW

Ash.J.Williams

Warper wrote: »

I just have to come back in say i love this movie - absolute WOW

sure is...one of the best

Heckler

Saw it last night. Enjoyed it but enjoyed the first more. Thin plot to string together the action sequences. Far too long.

Great fight scenes. I"d love to know how they puled these off. Surely there must have been serious bruises !

Fantastic car chase.

8/10

Ash.J.Williams

longhalloween wrote: »

Nope

After Koso's death Bangun accepts responsibility for all the violence. Uco had already teamed up with Bejo, as it was Bejo's assassin that finished Koso off. It takes 3 more deaths to actually start the war.
And what was the 5 minutes chat with his estranged wife all about? Are we meant to care for him?

The point is the plot labours too much on Koso, when he has a relatively minor role. I think the role was created for the actor for all the choreography work he did in Raid 1&2, rather than out of need for the character.

No the character was created because he's f***n awesome

ancapailldorcha

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

No the character was created because he's f***n awesome

He adds nearly nothing to the film except unnecessary padding. This time could have been spent on developing the brother/sister duo or even just making it shorter.

Ash.J.Williams

Gareth said if people want "More" of the characters then it's mission accomplished,

Kiith

Saw it last night, and loved it. Not as good as the first one, and the plot was paper thin, but still really enjoyable. Some excellent fight scenes, though they certainly seemed to add some extreme violence for the sake of violence. Loved the fight with Baseball dude and Hammer chick, and the final fight with curved knife guy.

Prakoso seemed kind of pointless, and i spent the first few minutes of his screen time wondering how the hell Mad Dog survived the fight in the first film. I was happy to see him, as that was probably the best fight i've seen in years, but still a little confused. Then his wife turned up and i was totally lost. Also, Reza...i had no idea who that was when the cop mentioned him being in the club with Uco.

Also, the car chase scene. I'd heard that it was amazing, and it wasn't bad, but it just seemed kind of slow. Any time they zoomed out, the cars were going at the same speed as nearby traffic, and at the end a garbage truck that stuck the final car was going faster then them. Not quite what i expected, but enjoyable none the less.

e_e

ancapailldorcha wrote: »

He adds nearly nothing to the film except unnecessary padding. This time could have been spent on developing the brother/sister duo or even just making it shorter.

The martial arts genre is full of characters like this that say more through their actions than words. I don't see a problem with having more broadly drawn characters like this, even if it's among a larger and more intricate story. Would you use the "awwww I didn't really get to know Mad Dog!" complaint for the first movie? There's an allure and mystery to characters like hammer girl and baseball bat man, I feel the film would get absurd if it were to paint them as more 3 dimensional.

Why do you think a Prakoso backstory adds nothing to the film whereas a brother/sister story would? They have equal amount of screen time and the latter arguably add less to the plot. Yet people aren't complaining (rightly so, because they're amazing) like "Oh what are they doing in the movie?!"

Ash.J.Williams

e_e wrote: »

The martial arts genre is full of characters like this that say more through their actions than words. I don't see a problem with having more broadly drawn characters like this, even if it's among a larger and more intricate story. Would you use the "awwww I didn't really get to know Mad Dog!" complaint for the first movie? There's an allure and mystery to characters like hammer girl and baseball bat man, I feel the film would get absurd if it were to paint them as more 3 dimensional.

Why do you think a Prakoso backstory adds nothing to the film whereas a brother/sister story would? They have equal amount of screen time and the latter arguably add less to the plot. Yet people aren't complaining (rightly so, because they're amazing) like "Oh what are they doing in the movie?!"

in the interview i saw with evans, he was asked will there be a spin off with some of the characters (hammer girl et all) and he said no way...if people want more of them then it's best to leave it that way.

johnny_ultimate

I'd be totally behind the 'you're meant to want more' argument, but the difference is I wanted more not because all of the characters were fascinating and mysterious, but rather because the film didn't offer enough to convince me they were fascinating and mysterious. It's like Hammer Girl was just meant to be mysterious because she wore sunglasses, was deaf and wielded dual hammers. But to me it further highlighted a trend of shallow characterisation throughout the film.

And that's with Hammer Girl, who is actually one of the more intriguing personalities in the film despite her dangerously limited screentime. We've been through the plethora of characters who are simply bland and inconsistent before. Even when the film does take time to develop relationships and personalities, it often does so in pretty haphazard ways. Take the scene in the karaoke booth - is there a single more clichéd and lazy tool in a screenwriter's handbook then having the 'bad guy' violently threaten some 'helpless' women, who are only saved by the calm interference of the 'hero'? In fact, I think Evans might have nicked it wholesale from an early Kitano film, who at least tends to film such scenes with more aesthetic imagination. It's as broad stroke and familiar as storytelling gets, and occupies a good five minutes of screentime while telling us little about the characters in a largely uninteresting way.

Oddly enough, I'd actually consider 'Koso one of the more successful indulgences in the film, even if I had some concerns with Evans' execution of the storyline (the awkward cut from busy nightclub to empty one, the random snow). That's actually a character I would have liked to spend more time with because the glimpses of backstory were pretty interesting, and he was a well-defined yet likeably enigmatic screen presence. It does, however, indicate some of the film's structural oddities. Characters and tangential subplots are introduced suddenly and concluded just as quickly. Others are introduced early and are barely explored, while other people again are little more than background wallpaper until they're suddenly and unconvincingly identified as key players. The result is a lack of dramatic weight to what are supposed to be exciting twists, and all this despite the copious amounts of screentime devoted to building the drama. Attention has clearly been paid to building on various elements of the narrative, and yet significant chunks feel sorely lacking.

Perhaps it would have been 'absurd' to spend more times developing them as three dimensions, but honestly I see little reason why more depth to storytelling wouldn't have made the already visceral action hit even harder.

Ash.J.Williams

it's the oddities that have drawn me towards asian cinema

e_e

johnny_ultimate wrote: »

Take the scene in the karaoke booth - is there a single more clichéd and lazy tool in a screenwriter's handbook then having the 'bad guy' violently threaten some 'helpless' women

Funnily enough, I thought the quick moment where Prakoso chases down a group of guys and one of them throws his partner at him as if she's bait said more about the character's treatment of women than that scene did. I'm with you there anyway.

ancapailldorcha

e_e wrote: »

The martial arts genre is full of characters like this that say more through their actions than words. I don't see a problem with having more broadly drawn characters like this, even if it's among a larger and more intricate story. Would you use the "awwww I didn't really get to know Mad Dog!" complaint for the first movie? There's an allure and mystery to characters like hammer girl and baseball bat man, I feel the film would get absurd if it were to paint them as more 3 dimensional.

Why do you think a Prakoso backstory adds nothing to the film whereas a brother/sister story would? They have equal amount of screen time and the latter arguably add less to the plot. Yet people aren't complaining (rightly so, because they're amazing) like "Oh what are they doing in the movie?!"

I think the brother/sister pair were more interesting characters. That's just my opinion of course and there seem to be plenty who are happy with the Prakoso character's backstory. The film needed to be streamlined but if Evans and company wanted to spend so much time on dialogue, I'd rather that it was focused on the brother and sister. Again, just my opinion.
In the grand scheme of things, Prakoso served only as the trigger for a gang war and was insufficient even at that. The filmmakers going out of their way to give him character development when he was merely a plot device is something I find daft considering the already sizeable length of the flim.

Looper007

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

in the interview i saw with evans, he was asked will there be a spin off with some of the characters (hammer girl et all) and he said no way...if people want more of them then it's best to leave it that way.

That's what I love about The Raid films, you don't have to read to deep into the meaning just sit back and enjoy what's put on the screen, Visually the bad guys were like comic book characters at their best, even Tarantino would have been proud of them.

I see a few folks on here saying the first Raid is better and others think the second is better (I'm one). I look at it like my two favourite Clash albums, the first is straight up punk rock, nothing too fancy just right in your face and London Calling had a bit more choice and upped the ante. I think both films are amazing, and are well deserving of their acclaim.

Any word on how it's doing at the Box Office? I know in America although it was critically acclaimed it done poorly but that was to be expected, American's and subtitles don't go together even if it's a action flick.