The Raid 2

The Raid 2 (Serbuan Maut 2: Berendal) (2014)

80% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 128 reviews)

Runtime: 150 minutes (no, not a misprint)

Directed by: Gareth Evans

Starring: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, Donny Alamsyah

From: Sony Pictures Classics

Here's a review from me that I copied and pasted from Letterboxd, only I have to take some stuff out along with adding it in. It's too long to explain why, as it's already going to be a lengthy review. I do have to spoil one thing in the review, but for me it's for good reason. I think it says a lot about what sort of movie this is.

To steal the plot description from the IMDb: "Only a short time after the first raid, Rama goes undercover with the thugs of Jakarta and plans to bring down the syndicate and uncover the corruption within his police force."

I loved The Raid; I saw it twice on the big screen and thought it was incredible; as a means of comparison, I gave it 5 stars at Letterboxd. I knew that the sequel would have en entirely different sort of plot and I was OK with that, as more of the same would just be repetitive.

I eagerly anticipated seeing this movie after all the extremely strong praise I've seen for it pretty much everywhere as it was released elsewhere before it finally got a wide release in the U.S. this weekend; I thought there was no way I wouldn't dislike this movie. I just presumed it would be something else I'd give 5 stars to and it'd be a strong candidate for my top movie of the entire year.

Unfortunately, I then saw the film. On Letterboxd I gave it 2 1/2 stars, mainly because of its action scenes.

As for the action, a lot of it is really great and some of it is simply incredible. Unfortunately, some of it is overkill to the point of me rolling my eyes, and while the first movie had one setpiece involving shaky-cam BS, this movie noticeably had more of that, which I found to be greatly disappointing.

But, the reason why I'm down on the film is the story. To me, this movie is just too damn long for the tale it's telling and I just thought it was never interesting. It's a bunch of sh*tty characters acting sh*tty and I was never given a reason to care about them. I still tried to follow along but the plot was too confused and too full of nonsense and dumb situations and too many moments where things just made zero sense. There are plenty of other crime dramas/gangster dramas which try to do a similar thing a lot better than it's done here.

Then, there's some side characters which are seemingly introduced only to fill out the long runtime and don't really matter too much in the thick of things. Some other characters are just too cartoony and preposterous for what otherwise is a crime drama you can almost believe could actually happen. Hammer Girl has some sweet moments, but is in no way what you'd encounter in real life.

Then, there's how the violence at times comes off as being repellent, as if everyone's trying to top themselves from what was done in the first movie. It unfortunately reminded me of the really repellent violence in Only God Forgives, a movie I downright hated and thought was pretentious douchy garbage. However, with the violence at times and there being a few "colorful" scenes I couldn't help but think that.

Also, there are a few times where I was wondering if I'm watching a dream sequence but it was never identified as such. The biggest example is the scene that starts off at a dance club with throbbing music from a DJ.

That scene starts off well, then it just gets... strange, to the point that I am questioning the setting of the film. Most of the time it looks to be set in Indonesia but that scene greatly puzzled me once I realized it made zero logical sense and all I can figure is that it was totally pretentious horsesh*t only done to make things "look cool", and in this sort of movie it stood out in an awful way and I think that was a turning point for me... 

The movie was disappointing to me to a point but once that scene happened and it left me at first puzzled and then angry, I don't think there was any turning back. But I guess most other people are happy with or are willing to accept there being SNOW in INDONESIA in September... or at any month of the year in that tropical country and a scene set in a large city instead of a mountaintop or what have you...

Really, if it wasn't for the action scenes I'd rate this lower, that's how much I didn't care for the story and how it played out. It's a massive disappointment to me and I can NOT believe such a thing ended up happening, but I am being 100% honest here. I wish I could love it like almost everyone else.

While I am crushed this motion picture did not work for me, at least I still have the first movie to watch and enjoy; my memories of this movie won't taint the original.

I thought I'd be going out Saturday night to see another film but now that likely won't happen. There were idiots at the screening of this movie; that and this day being crappy in general... I likely will stay in for the weekend and I can just watch one of a plethora of films at home. Either way, I'll be back Sunday night.