The Raid 2

The Raid 2 picks up shortly after the original film, This time Rama goes into prison undercover in order to infiltrate the gangs of Jakata, and expose police corruption.

I guess the first thing to say, is that this is an extremely violent film, it's marshal arts are very brutal in places, if you have seen the original riad film then you will know what to expect. It is also not in English, so following the subtitles can be a little difficult in places, especially in a couple of scenes where they are talking quickly.

My main issues with this film though are not the subtitles or the violence, but for me the cinematography makes this is very difficult film to follow, the whole thing is extremely dark, I felt like I wanted someone to turn up the brightless level so I could actually see what was going on, even in situations where the chracters were outside during the day, the brightness level is to low.

The camera work during the fight scenes was a problem for me, the action is pretty full on, but it is shot with hand held cameras and there is an awful lot of camera movement, which at some points made if very difficult to follow what was going on. Another issue is the choreography of the fight scenes being totally unrealistic, on several occasions one person ends up fighting a large number of opponents, however it felt like the opponents were playing a tag team, where they would come one at a time, and the others would stand back and watch until someone got incapacitated or killed and then the next would attack, taking out 10 people one at a time is much easier than 10 at one, in reality surely all 10 would attack and overwhelm the one.

add all of that with the fact that it was a late night showing and I was tired, and I quickly lost the will to see this trhrough to the end, at nearly 2 and a half hours long, this could also do with being a lot shorter 4/10