Instant classic and one of the best films I've ever seen
Okay, I'm 50 films off having reviewed 4,000, so I've seen a fair few flicks in my time. Many of them have been good, some bad, a lot of them middling. But very few of them blow me away, and the ones that do so tend to be the really intense thrillers that are packed with suspense and absolutely great action scenes. THE RAID was a great movie which I really enjoyed, and I heard the hype about the sequel but was afraid to believe it. I needn't have been; THE RAID 2 is an absolutely brilliant movie and one of the best films I've ever seen.
This sequel doesn't slavishly copy the original, which is a good thing. Instead, it's a sprawling gangster movie, an Indonesian variant of the ones popular in Hong Kong and South Korea, enlivened with some incredibly violent and extremely well choreographed action sequences which usually take the "one vs. many" formula to the extreme. This stuff is great in itself, enlivened with larger than life characters and more depth than you'd expect from a typical thriller.
Stuff continues in this vein up until the last forty five minutes, at which point you realise that everything preceding this point was just the build up to the denouement, which is an action spectacular unlike anything ever put on film. There's a stupendous car chase, a great three-way between top fighters, and the final kitchen one on one, which I think might well be the best fight ever put on film (and I've seen most of the Bruce Lee/Donnie Yen/Jackie Chan/Tony Jaa fights). Everything is perfect: the choreography, the music, the violence. Iko Uwais and Gareth Evans both go from strength to strength and everything just gels together perfectly. Go buy this now, you won't be disappointed!
This sequel doesn't slavishly copy the original, which is a good thing. Instead, it's a sprawling gangster movie, an Indonesian variant of the ones popular in Hong Kong and South Korea, enlivened with some incredibly violent and extremely well choreographed action sequences which usually take the "one vs. many" formula to the extreme. This stuff is great in itself, enlivened with larger than life characters and more depth than you'd expect from a typical thriller.
Stuff continues in this vein up until the last forty five minutes, at which point you realise that everything preceding this point was just the build up to the denouement, which is an action spectacular unlike anything ever put on film. There's a stupendous car chase, a great three-way between top fighters, and the final kitchen one on one, which I think might well be the best fight ever put on film (and I've seen most of the Bruce Lee/Donnie Yen/Jackie Chan/Tony Jaa fights). Everything is perfect: the choreography, the music, the violence. Iko Uwais and Gareth Evans both go from strength to strength and everything just gels together perfectly. Go buy this now, you won't be disappointed!
- Leofwine_draca
- Aug 29, 2014