Film Review: The Raid 2: Berendal

Director: Gareth Evans

After the huge success from almost nowhere that The Raid: Redemption had comes the second film from Welsh director Gareth Evans whose already carving a name for himself in Asian Martial-Arts cinema. The second film was larger in terms of ambition and scope with the script for Berendal having been written before the first movie was put into production. Evans was unable to secure enough funding so only re-opened Berendal after the success of Redemption meant production company's were willing to offer more funding.

Rama fighting to the death in a large industrial kitchen

Within hours of the end of the first movie, Rama (Iko Uwais) is sent undercover to infiltrate the biggest crime family in Jakarta run by Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo) and his son Uco (Arifin Putra). But first Rama must critically injure someone using his false identity to get into prison with Uco and get close to him. Naturally Rama, now as Yuda, creates some enemies in prison which means he has to right just to survive his sentence before he can even begin his real investigation into the criminal underworld and its corrupt cops.

The second film is arguably more brutal than the first with some of the machine gun fire replaced with a multitude of battles using weapons like clubs, bats, knives and hammers. The martial-arts aspect is ramped up as guns are hardly used which allows Iko Uwais to really display his amazing abilities infront of the camera. Throughout the film Iko Uwais is excellent not just as a fighting action star but as a genuine lead actor in the non-fighting scenes, he was thoroughly impressive.

Alicia aka The Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man

 Despite the long run-time, Evans keeps the tension ratcheted up in the scenes between the fighting and you do feel a realistic tension for Rama as to whether he will be discovered as a police officer by Bangun and his gang. Certain plotlines that appeared to be predictable actually turn out to be red herrings or never actually happen which helped avoid the film falling into predictable clichés. The plot itself isn't particularly complex or ground-breaking but holds together long enough to bring forth the incredible action scenes and a fascinating finale. The only downside was the lack of scenes involving The Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man who got very little characterization or actual action scenes despite being superb to watch on screen.

3.5/4 Gareth Evans has truly crowned himself the new king of the Martial Arts genre

Fun Fact: The Raid 2 has been banned in Malaysia for the past fortnight since its release but as of yet no official reason has been given.