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Whatever else the film may be, it isn't slapdash, and it's clearly made by an ambitious talent. There's a great sense of skill and style in the proceedings, his clean compositions, this time filmed in widescreen scope, and his knowledge of when to slow things down and let the scene breathe. But Evans is more than simply a fanboy filmmaker.
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The unwieldy length is also problematic, as the film's frequent shifting allegiances and occasionally Coppola-style pretensions clash with its more primal action movie roots. It's a thin line between exhilarating and exhausting, and The Raid 2 occasionally slips onto the wrong side. His detractors may still not find much here-if The Raid felt like levels in a video game, The Raid 2 feels like an expansion pack, with all of the opponents with specialized skills (baseball bats, hammers, knives) playing like mini-bosses as the characters absorb insane amounts of damage, many existing simply to be murdered, decapitated, and have their heads blown off.
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By and large though, when the film is in motion, its light on its feet, the action sequences staged with incredible clarity and power, and Evans' and his teams' choreography is frequently impressive, often breathtaking, and almost always exhilarating to the point of exhaustion. There isn't any denying that he stages action mayhem like no one else around-not since Jackie Chan Kong-sang was in his prime has the screen seen such kinetic chaos, but Evans occasionally dips into an almost pornographic level of unnecessary detail, occasionally mistaking brutality for the balletic, drowning the screen in so much blood that it's numbing.
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How well you think Evans keeps all of his spinning plates in the air before smashing them on his head is depends on who well you think he marries these two seeming disparate aesthetics. And he also hits lots and lots and lots of people, and crashes some cars too, destroying half of the city of Jakarta along the way.Ĭaught somewhere between the B-movie pulp of the original and a broader sweep, The Raid 2 has an occasional identity crisis, sometimes trying for a Godfather-style crime saga while cracking skulls at others. Caught in the middle of a bloody gang war, Rama desperately tries to stay afloat amid the corruption and rivers of blood, as the various players make their moves, desperate to come out on top. On the inside, he befriends the son of a powerful crime lord and ingratiates himself into their syndicate undercover. Picking up where its predecessor left off, squeaky clean baddest cop Rama goes undercover in prison, but winds up in a violent riot and spends a little more time there than he intended. If The Raid was Assault on Precinct 13 directed by Yuen Woo Ping, The Raid 2 is like The Godfather directed by John Woo, with Evans unleashing kinetic martial arts mayhem the likes of which hasn't been seen since Hong Kong Action Cinema's glory days.
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Whereas the first film was a modestly-budgeted B-movie with a confined setting, sequels doesn't just go big, it takes on the whole city, going from 1.78 to full scope widescreen. Taking it's predecessor and amping things up more, more, more, and more, it's a Kama Sutra of violence, staging ever possible martial art move in every possible location with every possible camera angle with every possible sound effect with every possible weapon.
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Subscribing firmly to the sequel formula that more is indeed better, Gareth Evans' The Raid 2 is the cinematic equivalent of chasing a box of doughnuts with a case of Red-bull and a package of stimulants. "I don't eat, I just devour, everything in every hour." "Too much of anything is too much for me, too much of everything is too much for me." Everyone has to be in perfect unison or else.things wouldn't end well. And that while executing the fight choreography too. One mounted in front of camera man #2, and one behind camera man #3.įast enough, I'm fairly sure. What I love about the GIF too is that, in order to capture it all, they have three additional cameras filming the whole thing. If you break it down, you have:Ĭamera Man #1 rolls on up to the vehicle and pushes the camera into the car via the front left window.Ĭamera Man #2 (in his stealth leather-seat costume) grabs the camera and moves it out the complete opposite window (rear right).Ĭamera Man #3, attached to the side of the fucking car, grabs the camera and holds it steady as the next car comes speeding down the road.Īll while moving at not "high" speed but fast enough that if someone fucked up then someone would be dead.
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