People are punched, kicked, beaten, shot, bludgeoned, stabbed, run over and cut up with hammers. Each one is rhythmically predictable and similar: the characters prepare for a standoff in slow-motion and then engage in some of the most gratuitous, barbaric violence I’ve seen in years.
They occupy broader spaces than the original’s claustrophobic confines. There are apparently nineteen different set pieces in the film. The simplicity of the script is typified by Gareth Evans’ adolescent work behind the camera. She has a friend who murderers people with a baseball. Other characters are ridiculous cartoons, like Prakoso who looks like a hobo and kills for money to pay for child welfare, or are sketches including a killer simply named Hammer Girl. Being a violent, misogynist animal, he doesn’t elicit sympathy. In prison Rama befriends Ucok (Arifin Putra), the son of a crime boss, who is threatening to rise up against his own father. Berandal also thinks it’s Shakespearean, resorting to clichés about aspirational gangsters climbing the criminal ladder. His wife and child feature so little that they don’t forge an emotional counterpoint to the fighting. He has a few verbal arguments with his superiors but no reaction to the people he kills, save for a cop caught in the crossfire, and no development. There is admittedly more dialogue and more characters but it’s in vain when realising the simplicity of the characterisations. It’s dubious and implausible that despite all the corruption no one recognises Rama or uncovers his new identity. Rama must hide himself and protect his family by becoming an undercover cop and infiltrating a crime syndicate to fight police corruption. It’s apparent that Berandal takes too many cues from Infernal Affairs and Martin Scorsese’s remake The Departed.
The narrative becomes further convoluted when adding in a gang war between the Indonesian and Japanese gangs. Though posturing as having a more complex narrative, it is diminutive in its achievements and ultimately limited.ĭespite having watched the first Raid recently, the opening scenes are very confusing in re-establishing old characters and introducing new ones. Yet after Berandal establishes a small gallery of characters who do have complicated motives this time, it retreats tiresomely back towards those action sequences. in screenwriting from the University of Glamorgan in Wales.
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He knows how to write because he has an M.A. It only proves how complacent Gareth Evans is about anything other than savage fistfights. Its emphasis on mindless violence entirely overshadows and substitutes the themes and characters in the screenplay. If you are as easily bored by fight scenes as I am, particularly when the main character is invincible to an insurmountable number of blows, it offers nothing else. I didn’t enjoy the first film and the sequel is as frustratingly short-sighted. Evans wanted to make Berandal as a prison drama years ago but it was too expensive, so he developed The Raid instead. It is 150 minutes, nearly an hour more, and cost four million dollars to make. Predictably, it’s a bigger, more expensive and longer film than its prequel. This sequel is subtitled Berandal, which fittingly means “thug”. The safest way to build on one success is to repeat and inflate the most successful elements and outperform the previous film. Directors are only solidified by being profitable. Yet filmmaking in any country is a greedy and complacent business. The film earned a total of nineteen million dollars in revenue and was such a success that Hollywood heavyweights are planning a remake, which might feature the Hemsworth brothers. It was about a rookie cop named Rama, played by martial arts tournament finalist Iko Uwais, who cleared a tower block of heavily armed criminals after his squad was ambushed. Welsh director Gareth Evans is based in Indonesia and made the martial arts police film locally for only one million dollars. The Raid: Redemption (2011) was a small hit from an unlikely source. A film limited by its scope and budget can occasionally defy its modest ambitions to become as popular as some of the more fancied mainstream Hollywood productions. Coincidentally, these are the two most defining characteristics of modern cinema. There is some deliberate Meta referencing at the beginning of The Raid 2: Berandal when a gangster speaks about ambition and limitations. Starring: Iko Uwais, Arifin Putra, Julie Estelle and Yayan Ruhian Reviewed by Damien Straker on March 24th, 2014 By Damien Straker The Raid 2: Berandal – Film Review
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