I didn't write review for a movie more than four years before, but after I watched yesterday this movie I couldn't just hold myself anymore. This movie is even better than the first one and I was thinking it's impossible for that to happens! The gtreatest Martial Arts action's movie in the history of cinema. Unbelievable!! Gareth Evans you're a God of kicking-butt, you blowed my mind away.

After the overwhelming success of Serbuan Maut (The Raid: Redemption) it's not surprising that Gareth Evans got the greenlight to make another one. Berandal (The Raid 2) continues where Serbuan Maut left, with an expectation to be... bigger. And it is big. Bigger budget, bigger ensemble, multiple locations, a car chase scene and clocking in at 150 minutes long, Berandal had the promised of be the sequel that we don't need but certainly the sequel that we deserve but it just fell short of living up to its lofty potential. Firstly the flaws; there were scenes and characters in the film that simply didn't belong and wholly unnecessary. The first is Yayan Ruhian as Prakoso; I don't fault Gareth Evans for wanting to include Yayan Ruhian again; hell, I would to but Yayan Ruhian is wasted as Prakoso, a character that could be played by anyone and certainly didn't need 3 scenes with 2 lackadaisical fight scenes. In one of the scenes, Perkoso ended up outside a club, during winter time, in tropical Jakarta; this is just pretentious nonsense; no one is South East Asia would ever believe that there is snow in the equator. Then there is also Batter and Hammer Girl; who are entirely necessary to the plot and their fight scenes were also lackluster. Julie Estelle as Hammer Girl especially, is really really weak; there was no acting, she can't fight, her choreography is crap. I think Gareth Evans was pressured into adding too much, and so, the film feels like it has a lot of 'bloatware.' All in all, you could at least cut off 30 minutes from the movie, which would've been a better outcome. More doesn't always mean more; less can be more. So, now the good. The movie has an excellent ensemble cast, even Yayan Ruhian shines as his role as Prakoso. Standout performances by Iko Uwais reprising his role as Rama, Ariffin Putra is fantastic as Uco (and he speaks excellent English), Tio Pakusadewo is credible as the mafia boss Bangun (and he speaks great Japanese), Ryuhei Matsuda and Keinichi Endo as the Goto family yakuza. The story had the potential to be really great a la Infernal Affairs or The Departed but due to the aforementioned 'bloatware' the story was reduced to gang rivalry, and a one man commando against the Indonesian Preman. I applaud Gareth Evans for depicting real criminal behavior along and this adds authenticity and believability to the film. Had, Evans cut out all the pretentious scenes out, he would have something really close to greatness. The best fight scene must be between Iko Uwais and Cecep Arif Rahman in the Kitchen fight with Karambit knives. This fight scene is as close to a real Silat fight as you can get and it was very well done. As it is, it's not bad. Berandal is not as good as Serbuan Maut, but it's still an entertaining affair.

First of all, I do not understand the complaints some people have with this movie. No guns? Indonesia isn't a country where it's easy to obtain guns. Do you watch war movies and complain "no a-bombs"? Too long? Why can't a movie be 150 minutes or even 230 or 500 minutes if it's good? Because too much over-stimulation has lowered our attention span? Then here's a good way to train it again(or the great "Love Exposure").Some complained that the story didn't make sense, that the first part had better fight scenes, etc...Naturally, the first part had to rely more on fight scenes, since they didn't have the budget for many locations or a bigger story. Here, we still get to see a lot of(creative) fight scenes, but we also get to see a car chase, some shootings, betrayal...For me, the only "complaints" are the snow scene(as beautiful as it is, it might as well snow in hell, it's Jakarta!) and...I think that's about it. And it's beautiful to watch, so it's not really a problem for me. Another small issue for me are the subtitles...my Indonesian is far from fluent, but I noticed that most of the time, the translation is far from what they're actually saying. Sometimes, it's just minor differences, but some differences are pretty big. For example, Uco refers to his father as "Sir"/"pa"(short for "bapak"). Now, "pak" or "pa" is indeed how you usually refer to older males in Indonesia(cab drivers, street vendors). But why would a son refer to his father as sir? But again, these are small things and especially the subtitles are not the directors fault, nor the actors.On the plus side, we have a real story this time. And it isn't just some cookie-cutter story line, but it's a pretty good one too! It has twists, it is exciting, it has interesting characters(and develops them). We get to see how Uco can't handle to stand in his father's shadow and how it eats him up inside...we can see how, despite being on the other side of the law(which he upheld so much in part 1), Rama realizes that the world isn't just black and white, good or bad...and that even among the "bad" guys, there are some who are really bad and some who may have strayed(Eka). Also, as someone who loves Indonesia and who's been to Jakarta countless times, I really love to see a movie in which we actually get to see this great city. It's a really nice change of venue and I wish a lot more movies would be shot in cities like this...it can be romantic(Thamrin at night, the underpass at Jl. Blora), it can be spooky and creepy(North Jakarta, parts of Grogol, East Jkt), it can be commercial(this city has probably 150 malls or more). Sure, it is unrealistically empty(anyone who's been to Jakarta will know that any street is basically NEVER empty, no matter how late at night or early in the day) and the car chase seems to be done, circling around the CBD only(which makes sense though, as Jakarta suffers from huge traffic issues and it would be a lot easier to stop traffic there than in any of the major roads). But at least it gives people an idea what this city looks like and might allow for more people to visit it.I hope that we'll get to see more good movies from Indonesia in the future, even with Gareth Evans having left the country. Before him, most of the movies they made were shallow soap opera-like romantic comedies or dramas, all of which not very appealing to non- Indonesians(and even many Indonesians, according to my friends). It's an underestimated country and I'd be happy to see it receive more international fame.

The Raid 2 is a long movie, but not a very interesting one. Starting up shortly after the last one ended, the hero goes undercover with the mob in search of police corruption, but the movie ignores that in favor of a perpetually uninteresting and occasionally confusing story centered on the son of the head mobster.It's interesting reading the reviews here because they are mainly favorable and focus on how much action there was even though I felt like the action was pretty thin for most of the movie. There are some big solid fights here and there, such as a muddy one in a prison yard, but there are also long stretches of action-less, tedious storytelling. I felt like I spent a tremendous amount of time waiting for anything interesting to happen, and it wasn't until very near the end that the pace picked up, notably with a big car battle and an exciting fight involving curved blades. User reviews describe this film as more action-packed than the original, but while there may be more action in total, I suspect there's less per minute; it doesn't feel packed by any means.I watched this movie because I really enjoyed the original, but before I compare the two I have to add the caveat that I don't remember the first one that well and am going from a general impression (I seem to have forgot to review it after I saw it).The first movie had a brilliant premise in that the whole movie was a cops vs. criminals battle in a single apartment building. Movies that close the participants in, like Die Hard or Alien, offer filmmakers a sort of built-in discipline, and The Raid was tightly focused because of its structure. The sequel, on the other hand, can go anywhere and does, resulting in something rambling and fuzzy.While I don't remember the details, I do remember it was one of those movies where I would say "WOAH!" out loud from time to time as something amazing happened. I did not say "woah" once during The Raid 2, although I did say "ick" a number of times. The violence is gory and sadistic, so even when it's clever and well-choreographed, as in some subway carnage involving hammers, I found it a bit much.With characters I didn't care about, a clichéd story that didn't make much sense, and action sequences spaced too far apart, this movie never pulled me in. I don't think I'll even bother with the inevitable Raid 3.