The Raid 2 had a fight coming on and off the screen.
The first film, Indonesian-made The Raid, aka The Raid: Redemption (2011), captured international attention.
It’s considered by many (including me) to be an all-time great of the action/martial arts genres, featuring some of the most captivating hand-to-hand combat captured on film.
While the original didn’t exactly light up box offices in the States, there were enough earnings domestically and abroad to get a sequel, one with an increased budget (~$4.5 million over ~$1.1-).
Writer/director Gareth Evans returned, and so did the original’s star, Iko Kuwais, and choreographer Yayan Ruhian.
So armed with a bigger budget but facing higher expectations, could The Raid 2 deliver? Let’s find out.
Is The Raid 2 a good movie?
Note: The film is also known as The Raid: Retaliation
The Plot of The Raid 2:
Just after the events of the first film, bloodied survivors Rama (Iko Uwais), Bowo (Tegar Satrya), and Lieutenant Wahyu (Alain O.) meet with Lieutenant Bunawar (Cok Simbara).
Bunawar leads a covert internal affairs team investigating police chief Reza’s (Roy Marten) dealings with politician/gangster Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo) and Japanese mobster Hideaki Goto (Kenichi Endō).
In exchange for protecting Rama’s family and hiding his identity from corrupt police or the Jakarta mafia, Bunawar convinces Rama to join his investigation.
Bunawar sends Rama undercover to infiltrate Bangun’s organization by befriending Bangun’s son, Uco (Arifin Putra).
As he earns Uco’s trust, will Rama’s identity be uncovered? And can he survive his new identity as an enforcer in the criminal underworld?
The rest of the main cast Includes:
- Oka Antara as Eka, Bangun’s consigliere
- Alex Abbad as Bejo
- Cecep Arif Rahman as “The Assassin”
- Julie Estelle as Alicia/”Hammer Girl”
- Ryuhei Matsuda as Keiichi Goto
- Kazuki Kitamura as Ryuichi
- Yayan Ruhian as Prakoso
- Very Tri Yulisman [id] as “Baseball Bat Man”
- Epy Kusnandar [id] as Topan
- Zack Lee as Benny
- Donny Alamsyah as Andi
- Marsha Timothy as Dwi
- Henky Solaiman as Rama’s father
- Fikha Effendi as Rama’s wife, Isa
- Deddy Sutomo as the mediator
- Pong Hardjatmo as police commissioner
The Good Things:
That Cast of Enemies, +3 Points
The Raid 2 keeps its henchpeople colorful, giving us some exciting baddies.
There’s the deadly brother/sister duo of Hammergirl and Baseball Bat Man, two eccentric enforcers like something out of a Robert Rodriguez movie (Once Upon a Time in Mexico).
The sister duel wields carpenters’ claw hammers (ouch!), and the brother’s special moves are hitting a baseball at people’s heads or just good old-fashioned bat beatdowns.
On paper, they could break the more serious tone of this movie, but it’s reigned in enough not to.
Then there’s The Assassin, Bejo’s top dog.
He never speaks, and his graceful movements and precision knife strikes show he’s in command.
Think of him as that little silent guy Homer Simpson geeks out over when the Yakuza battle the Springfield mafia in his yard on The Simpsons, if you know the reference.
The Third Act Shifts Into Gear, +10 Points
The final act is the chaotic blitz you tuned in for.
There’s a car chase (among the best I’ve seen) that combines close-quarters fighting with high-speed crashes of metal and narrow misses.
And it gets desperate. Seatbelts are makeshift strangulation devices. There’s a battle of who can reload their gun faster that a character literally wins by their teeth.
Then, a new building raid begins, with Rama storming Bejo’s stronghold, not intent on making any arrests.
Boss Battles that Live Up to the Billing, + 6 Points
Sometimes you watch a martial arts film, anticipating battles that, once they arrive, you wish would end because they drag on far too long.
Other times the key showdowns get too over the top, stretching the audience’s slack for unrealistic allowances into full-on “WTF was that?” indulgences.
The Raid 2 just gets on with delivering.
When Rama takes on mini-boss characters Hammergirl and Baseball Bat Man, it’s a bloody ballet, Rama slipping in a careful rhythm between club and claw hammer swings.
And the inevitable showdown between Rama and The Assassin is ~seven minutes, which leaves nothing in the tank and leaks a lot of blood on the floor.
The pace of the battle is relentless, and even the characters get gassed and are forced to take a breather.
Warning – the clip below will ruin that fight between Rama and The Assassin for you. But if you are the type that fails the marshmallow test, well, it’s below.
Pencak Silat Returns, +4 Points
Indonesian martial art Pencak Silat’s grappling, kicking, pounding, and knife fighting returns, with characters improvising with their environment (including one painful scene with a cooktop) to dispatch their enemies.
The action holds up as well as the original film’s, which is quite the compliment.
You can read a more detailed breakdown of this combat style and its camerawork/editing in my review of the first film.
The Not As Good Things:
More Plot this Time…but Two and a Half Hour’s Worth? -4 Points
While the first film crammed in a few intense hours, the Raid 2 unfolds over ~two years.
The plot is a reworking of Evan’s unused script for a film called Berandal. An action crime drama, he dropped Rama into its framework, tweaking it to line up with his character motivations.
For better or worse, creators adapt unused story ideas to fit a new line of characters all the time.
But perhaps not starting from scratch is what hurt this film.
The plot is an unbalanced cocktail: one part action/martial arts film, one part mob rise to power story, and one part undercover cop drama.
But I only liked the taste of that first, fist-fighting ingredient.
The mob story is the ambitions of the power-hungry we’ve gone down time and time before, with nothing clever or inventive to break it up.
And the undercover cop drama barely floats in.
We don’t fear Rama is getting so close to the criminals he’s becoming one, like Donnie Brasco.
Nor do we feel the suspense at his possible discovery for more than a few moments, unlike, say, the celebrated Infernal Affairs Trilogy (for the unfamiliar, three amazing films that were kneecapped into a U.S. remake, The Departed, but that’s another article).
I’m all for sequels trying to go deeper and be ambitious, but this is a plot that can’t justify its 150-minute runtime.
Unnecessary Character, -1 Point
**Spoiler Alerts Here**
Actor/choreographer Yayan Ruhian, who played Mad Dog in the original, returns.
But this time Ruhian plays Bangun’s trusted assassin, Prakoso.
Director Evans has said he will only do a martial arts movie with Ruhian. Still, other than that statement, it’s confusing why the character exists.
The film spends time setting the character up only to kill him off. His death is meant to advance the plot, yet events in the movie make it pointless.
Cutting this character out of a movie that’s too long would have saved precious runtime.
And when I first saw Ruhian, with his shaggy, homeless appearance, I thought he was reprising his role of Mad Dog in the first film, which gets confusing.
Hanging with Uncle Uco and Pals, -3 Points
Uco is this movie’s Commodus (Gladiator), who wants more responsibility and power from his father, Bangun.
But he’s boring. The character has no sympathetic nor unique, all-too-despicable qualities worth following him for.
You could say the same for newfound ally Bejo. He’s a cane-carrying, up-and-coming meanie who wears his aviator sunglasses at night. Still, he’s more an action figure of a crime boss than a real, vibrant one.
One Punch to the Head Too Many, -1 Point
After a while, you get tired of seeing so much violence, which can creep in without the action.
For example, a business meeting is casually conducted by slitting the throats of tied-up victims one by one with an Exacto knife.
Yeesh.
Bye Bye, Survival Horror, -1 Point
The Raid 2 takes the fight to wide-open locations, like a brawl in a prison yard. And while it makes the sequel broader, the trade-off is that it leaves out one of the original’s strengths.
The Raid had an element of video game survival horror (think the game Resident Evil).
The confines of the building and the animalistic fight between the elite police (Indonesian SWAT) against the onslaught of ferocious tenants – it was like the building itself was a character.
We still get some close-quarters combat, like a nasty brawl inside and just outside a diseased-looking toilet stall (ewwww) or a fight in a noodle restaurant.
And opening things up gave us the glorious car chase.
But we lost the frantic flee-for-your-life, fight-when-you-have-to tone that characterized the original.
More Ladies? – 1 Point
I criticized the first movie for its lack of female characters.
This time we get Hammergirl, Prakoso’s wife, and Rama’s wife. And I spotted a secretary.
It was a step or two in the right direction. Still, more prominent female characters would be welcome.
Go Watch The Raid 2
Total Score: 12 Points
Fans of the first film and action movie buffs, go watch The Raid 2. The film features more of the best on-screen combat you can find.
The fight and chase sequences rise to the occasion, combining the beauty and brutality of Indonesian Pencak Silat martial arts with stunt work fit for a Mad Max film.
But casual audiences may not love this movie.
The sequel tried to grow up, and in doing so, its shortcomings in storytelling were exposed.
It’s a whopping 2.5 hours that doesn’t justify that length, marrying itself to a plot that isn’t novel or compelling.
And the frantic, survival horror, all-out pacing of the first film is gone, weakening what a winning, one-of-a-kind formula was.
Credit goes to Gareth Evans and the crew for matching the action of part one (and, in some fans’ eyes, exceeding it). Fans could be more likely to revisit the best set pieces and fights from part two over part one.
Still, the gangster action drama was best left as a separate project.
The Raid 2’s Legacy:
I already wrote about The Raid’s legacy in a post about that film; so I won’t go into the exact same details here for the sequel.
But as I said in the original’s legacy, though many wished for a third installment of The Raid, director Gareth Evans, to paraphrase, felt things had wrapped up neatly for main character Rama after part two and wanted to pursue other projects.
One of those projects I didn’t mention the last time around is the Netflix film Havoc, starring Tom Hardy and released less than two weeks before this episode is published.
Right now, that film has a 67% critical, 37% audience meter on Rotten Tomatoes, just a reference for how the reception is going so far.
You could say that The Raid 2, as opposed to part one, helped show that Gareth Evans could handle a long film with a more expansive plot than the first film.
And somehow I overlooked talking about actor and choreographer Yayan Ruhian in the last film’s legacy section.
He’s gone on to be in lots of movies too, including Star Wars: The Force Awakens as Tasu Leech.
And Iko Uwais, who plays Rama, and Cecep Arif Rahman, who played the Assassin, were also in that movie with him.
So I guess there’s a Raid characters thing going on in The Force Awakens I didn’t know about.
But those three do end up in the same movies together a lot, since they work in the martial arts sector.
Ruhian also appeared in John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum as Shinobi #2. And wouldn’t you know it, Cecep Arif Rahman was Shinobi #1.
And Ruhian was also the character Shaman, the mentor, in the Sam Raimi produced Boy Kills World that came out in 2023.
He’s also had roles in many Indonesian, Malaysian, and American productions, like the Skyline film series.
Cecep Arif Rahman, who played The Assassin, actually began his acting career with The Raid 2.
He had been sought out to appear in Gareth Evans’s earlier film, Merantau, but turned it down. But eventually they got him, and you might say we got him because he’s explosive and amazing.
It looks like he continues to act in Indonesian films, along with the American roles I already mentioned.
Apologies to any actors I haven’t highlighted here.
Lastly, just like The Raid influenced the martial arts and action world, The Raid 2 went bigger with its action sequences. Both movies influenced franchises like, say, John Wick, but you have to say this second one showed it was no fluke the first time around and demonstrated what can be possible for expansive action in a variety of settings.
Well, that’s everything. Thank you so much for reading.
For more Gareth Evans and The Raid, you can read my review for the first film here.
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Disclaimer:
This review’s factual information was gathered through online sources, like Wikipedia, IMDB, or interviews. Misrepresentations and errors are possible but unintentional.
Making art is hard. This is a fan’s blog. Any criticisms are meant to be constructive.
