Evans, Uwais, and Ruhain spent months of pre-production choreographing the scenes, shooting them on video and editing them to see what they could pull off. Most reviewers have focused on the action and they should, because it’s amazing. But Uco is chafing at the bit and has allied himself with outside gang leader Bejo, who wants to turn Bangun and Goto on each other, then claim the city from the exhausted victor. He wins Uco’s confidence, and when he gets out (long after Uco), he’s a made man in Bangun’s gang. Rama’s brother has recently been killed and so, eager for revenge, and worried about his family’s safety, he allows himself to be arrested in order to get close to Bangun’s hot-headed son, Uco, who’s serving out a prison sentence. ![]() The Raid 2 (which is opening here without the subtitle) picks up immediately after the ending of the previous movie with surviving cop Rama (Uwais) contacting one of the few policemen not marinated in corruption, Bunawar, who is determined to take down the two crime families that run Jakarta: Bangun’s clan, and the Japanese Goto family. It premiered at Sundance and has been released by art-house distributor Sony Pictures Classics, it’s stylishly shot, edited with a lot of confidence in the audience’s ability to follow parallel action, and the action is faster and more brutal than anything else on the market. Now, Evans has gone back to his gangster movie, styling it as a sequel to The Raid called The Raid 2: Berandal. Something of a moviemaking miracle, it was an example of the kind of narrative economy only the best movies manage. The Raid: Redemption told the story of a squad of cops trying to arrest a drug kingpin holed up in an apartment building populated entirely by criminals. It was the best thing that could have happened. The follow-up was supposed to be an epic gangster drama, but Evans couldn’t raise the funds and decided to shoot something more contained instead. But while shooting one of the action scenes in an elevator between Uwais and a silat teacher, Yayan Ruhian, Evans had the idea to bring Ruhian on board for his next movie as a co-star and action choreographer. ![]() The action was energetic, Uwais had charisma to burn, and the story was fun exploitation fare. It was called Merantau and served as a calling card for both star and director. Back in 2009, Gareth Evans and a former cell-phone service technician, Iko Uwais, made a movie about silat, Indonesia’s martial art.
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