Recognizing that he was going to have an awfully hard time topping the unrelenting martial arts mayhem of The Raid: Redemption, Gareth Evans changes tack for this follow-up. Whereas the original promised — and delivered with a vengeance — “one minute of romance, 99 minutes of non-stop carnage,” this installment keeps the incredibly high carnage quotient but grafts on roughly 45 minutes of storyline.
Rejoining the resilient cop Rama (Iko Uwais) right after he’s fought his way through a Jakarta apartment block of gangsters in a matter of hours, the sequel charts the subsequent years he spends infiltrating the ranks of the city’s organized crime syndicates.
Befriending the entitled heir to an underworld empire (Arifin Putra) while undercover in prison (a setting conducive to a couple of epic battles royal), he becomes entangled in the machinations of a power-hungry schemer (Alex Abbad) once released.
While Evans’ sublime fight choreography once again brings a balletic grandeur to brutal showdowns, his ambitions to step out of his skull-crushing, spine-snapping comfort zone reveal that he’s a rather crude storyteller. Ultimately, the majority of the dramatic scenes only generate tension due to the audience’s understandable impatience for the next set piece to be ushered in.
Having backed his way into a corner with his pedestrian scripting, it’s only fitting that Edwards opts to fight his way out. Consequently, this Raid earns its redemption by way of a final hour that’s a breathless sequence of elaborate melees executed with considerable brio. At this stage, it seems that Edwards’ only worthy adversaries in the realms of action filmmaking are his own limitations.
