Thoughts on "The Raid 2" (2014)

I watched The Raid 2 prior to going on vacation, and so I was unable to write a full review of it, with the film fresh in my mind. I did, however, want to put out some thoughts about what was a very good film and a very good sequel.

The first Raid is a film that feels easy to dismiss. It’s light on plot or really narrative of any kind. Instead, it’s almost pure “termite art”; a film that is a relentless action-packed thriller, crafting one breathless, mesmerizing action setpiece after another. The film follows a SWAT team in Indonesia attempting to oust a drug kingpin from the apartment high-rise that he has lay claim to as his base of operations. 

The film is essentially an exercise in style and one that’s obsessed with genre elements. Regardless though, it is the kind of expertly crafted, tightly edited and intelligently staged action film – indebted to martial arts films as much as Hong Kong action – that just doesn’t really get made anymore. The Raid has one goal in mind: ninety minutes of neck-breaking, ungodly intense action – all forward motion and no time for a second thought, or breath. 

This sequel has that same desire as well. But it also yearns to be so very much more. It’s insanely ambitious. Compared to the last film, there’s actually a fairly meaty story involving Rama (Iko Uwais), the protagonist of the first film, going undercover to weed out corrupt cops working with the mob. Rama spends two years in prison to earn some cred and befriends Uco (Arifin Putra), the son of a mob boss (Tio Pakusadewo). 

The film still features the first’s riveting action sequences but they’re spread out, punctuating the larger narrative rather than defining it. Where the first was a lean ninety minutes, the sequel is a muscular two and a half hours long. Where the first film used one apartment building as its playground, the sequel uses the city of Jakarta as its stomping grounds. 

The Raid 2 is certainly attempting to go bigger but it truly wants to earn that grander scale. Claustrophobia is exchanged for an operatic vision where Rama’s struggle to maintain his sense of honor while compromising his integrity is part and parcel for the fight of the city – which may or may not already be beyond saving. The themes are still minimal but they’re fuller than they were in the first film, taking the background question of honor and duty (and their ties to masculine identity) and putting them to the forefront. 

None of the first film’s “coolness” has been lost; indeed, it’s even branched out into new areas, adopting some American gangster chic of the past two decades, including Goodfellas and Quentin Tarantino’s films. Some of this style becomes a bit overplayed and needlessly florid at times (i.e. a female assassin who uses only hammers, cuz why the heck not; it looks awesome!!). But more often than not, the film nicely matches its heightened criminality to its Spartan fighting and violence; and it’s every bit as exhilarating as the first film, if not more so. 

In a lot of ways, the film outmatches its predecessor by reaching to be so much more. The Raid 2 could have just given us more of the same and that likely would have been acceptable and entertaining for fans of the first. Instead, it challenges itself to be better – and it largely succeeds. It may slag in places – it comes to a halt in places where it needs to refuel the tank to build up to another action sequence -- but its shortcomings seem to come from a place of trying to be better and do more, and occasionally, understandably, missing the mark.