Synopsis
The Raid 2, internationally released as The Raid 2: Berandal, is a 2014 Indonesian film advancing the martial arts genre, directed with distinctive control by Gareth Evans. As a direct extension of The Raid: Redemption, the narrative recommences only hours later, following an excavation of the triumph narrative. The sequel broadens the setting, enlarging the microcosm of the original closed vertical architecture to an urban-scale canvas, interweaving hypertrophied martial arts choreography with a rigorous, decade-long crime war in an electrifying plunge into Jakarta’s covert hierarchy.
The protagonist, Rama (Iko Uwais), a surviving patrol officer from the catastrophic airborne fumigation of the Ramayana Towers, finds continuance as a forensic failure. The ascent through the vertical labyrinth now leaves him identifiable collateral for the prevalent drug conglomerates. To conceal familial lines and systemically dismantle the rot within the interior policing hierarchy, the protagonist is covertly inducted by a clandestine integrity squad, commanded with surgical lucidity by Inspector Bunawar. His clandestine task is the submersion within the hierarchically stratified microcosm of the metropolis, a journey to clandestinely illuminate the interstate nexus of law enforcement, narcotics technology, and corrupt oversight, whose nexus now openly disparages the law.
To construct his covert persona, Rama is incarcerated under the forged identity of “Yuda.” Within the prison, he is tasked with cultivating a bond with Uco, heir to the formidable patriarch of the crime world, Bangun, to gain leverage over the latter’s syndicate. Following a prolonged and chaotic melee in the prison yard, rendered both brutal and visceral in its depiction, the mud-covered yard becomes the film’s signature tableau, furnishing Rama with the credibility to move from outsider to confidant and to penetrate the inner corridors of Bangun’s regime after parole.
Ascendancy within the organization soon entangles Rama in a complex skein of treachery, ambition and second-guessed loyalty. Uco, driven by an arrested desire for succession, falls prey to the snares of Bejo, a sadomasochistic upstart who aspires to inscribe his name onto Jakarta’s criminal map. Bejo, scenting vacancy and feeding Uco’s latent dislike of paternal restraint, deftly orchestrates an internecine conflict, branding it a vendetta between the titular clan of Bangun and the Goto, a formidable Marunaka complex with extensive Japanese misdirection channels.
As hostilities reach their zenith, Rama finds himself torn between allegiance to his covert mandate and the escalating personal costs that the mission imposes. His passage through the city soon resembles a hunted corridor, lined with assassins and henchmen, among whom the coldly efficient Hammer Girl and her sibling, Baseball Bat Man, emerge as Bejo’s twin avatars of lethal choreography. Their stylized approach to murder brings a hyperreal, almost graphic-novel quality to the ceaseless carnage, elevating their brief yet viscerally pregnant appearances to indelible visual icons within the merciless aesthetic of the film.
Anticipation accelerates toward a cataclysmic resolution, a crescendo orchestrated through double-cross, visceral altercations, and the climactic convergence of Rama against the city’s systemic rot. The penultimate stretch, particularly the protracted skirmish within the fluorescent confines of the kitchen, has rightly achieved the pantheon of violence-art: an extended tableau of bare-knuckle choreography where the martial discipline of Pencak Silat is exercised not as spectacle but as the language of survival, each motion a grotesque and magnificent synthesis of grace and dismemberment.
Rama secures the grudging accolade of victory, yet the accolade is pyrrhic—he exits the maelstrom irrevocably fragmented, the marrow of his original self devoured by the subterranean labyrinth he patrolled. The final tableau finds him battered, crimson-smeared, yet unfaltering, renouncing with deliberate sobriety the masquerade of the infiltrator. His retreat signifies not only an aversion to the insidious jurisprudence that colonized his mandate but a repudiation of the savagery legitimized by the empire of crime.
Main Cast:
Iko Uwais as Rama
Returning to the role of the reluctant champion, Uwais, a master of Pencak Silat, combines on-screen ferocity with behind-the-camera expertise as fight choreographer. His fluently executed sequences redefine the high-octane martial arts landscape, proving that precision and artistry can coexist.
Arifin Putra as Uco
Putra embodies Uco, the wrathful heir to the throne of Bangun. Torn between paternal expectation and ravenous ambition, he animates the arc with shades of vulnerability and ferocity, synthesising familial devotion and latent paranoia into a breathless, yet tragic ascent to the top.
Tio Pakusadewo as Bangun
Pakusadewo is Bangun, the architect of a fragile peace among Jakarta’s rival clans. His character’s inadvertent compassion is concealed beneath a sigloatherice and iron that forbids betrayal against the backdrop of simmering unrest. He extrapolates the part with subtropic restraint, conferring gravitas to every hushed utterance.
Alex Abbad as Bejo
Abbad plays Bejo, the serpent latent among the patriarchies. Substacking patriarchal abstraction, he combines languored charm with a palpable undertow of animus, compelling the viewer to discern the later mechanisms behind his immaculate calm. In his margins lurks the ruin of empires.
Julie Estelle as Hammer Girl
Estelle is the emblematically voiceless Hammer Girl, a grim chore woman who grafts lethality to ingenuity with twin spiked hammers. In the space of rhythmic impact, emotional tones are conveyed with immaculate precision. Through arresting choreographic flourishes, she transforms silence into a baleful, lingering epitaph.
Very Tri Yulisman as Baseball Bat Man
The film’s most distinctive enforcer, Baseball Bat Man wields his deadly implement with a balletic ferocity that transforms mundane neighborhood violence into a macabre performance art. His presence juxtaposes childlike innocence with a malevolent rhythm, underscoring the absurdity that chapters of brutality can co-exist with harmony.
Cecep Arif Rahman as “The Assassin”
The pivotal kitchen confrontation serves as a breathtaking anchor, with Rahman’s articulation of speed, precision, and improvisation. Armed only with the environment, his contest against Rama evolves into a kinetic symphony, where juxtaposed strikes and pan-generated weaponry push the limits of choreographed realism.
Director:
Gareth Evans
The Welsh director reaffirms his vocation by transplanting the authenticity of Indonesian culture into a high-octane visual vernacular. Evans harmonizes operatic violence with multi-generational conflict, reaffirming that narrative complexity and merciless choreography can coexist. The Raid 2 solidifies his authorship by embedding serpentine plot threads into sequences that unfold as operatic set pieces.
Fight Choreography:
Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, and Gareth Evans
Uwais, Ruhian, and Evans co-author a kinetic manifesto through the disciplined .Pencak Silat lexicon, turning movement language into design. Each exchange foregrounds martial elegance tempered by pragmatic brutality, conveying narrative subtext through limb, torso, and gaze. Precision and aggression coalesce into a poetic exploration of violence reined only by temporal boundary.
Cinematography:
Matt Flannery and Dimas Imam Subhono
Flannery and Imam Subhono’s lens choreography-adopts a fluid, dance-like rhythm, merging objectivity with embodied sensation. Narrowly confined alleyways become expansive stagecraft; the inter-tactical glare of headlights and swinging blade slices against darkness transforms visceral impact into psychological choreography, lending the viewer an unmediated bone-deep thrill.
Music
Composed by Joseph Trapanese and Aria Prayogi, the score intertwines synthetic industrial textures with gamelan, brass, and string instruments, establishing a constant, waterboarding intensity that saturates every scene and heightens the film’s unyielding, sleazy atmosphere.
IMDb Ratings and Critical Reception
In January 2025, the film retains a 7.9 IMDb score, amalgamated from hundreds of thousands of authenticated user votes.
Review aggregators and major outlets lauded the second installment for enlarging the geographical and thematic canvas forged in the first entry. Where The Raid: Redemption presented a nearly hermetic, propulsive siege narrative, The Raid 2 presents itself as a labyrinthine gangland opera, effortlessly canonizing itself alongside The Godfather and Infernal Affairs. Critics emphasized the seamless interweaving of crooked jurisprudence, insidious treachery, and fractured kinship, praising the screenplay for metabolizing such machinations while retaining visceral paragraph breaks every few minutes.
Fight set-pieces, notably the shrouded mud pit, the vertiginous warehouse, the subterranean circus, and the savage kitchen, were canonically classified as testamentary, even a defensive rebuttal, against the quaking-shot and cut frenzy that has suffocated Western tent-pole choreography.
Still, some viewers observed that the film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime occasionally drags, particularly in the more deliberate mid-section. Plot lines, while ambitious, can verge on labyrinthine. Nevertheless, genre enthusiasts regarded the narrative expansion as a gratifying expansion beyond the more circumscribed storyline of the original.
Conclusion
The Raid 2 constitutes a milestone of contemporary action cinema. It amplifies the achievement of its predecessor, evolving into a larger, more audacious tableau: a sprawling crime epic interlaced with martial-arts virtuosity. Under Gareth Evans’s imaginative direction and featuring Iko Uwais’s compelling lead performance, the picture delivers some of the most astonishingly crafted fight sequences forever preserved on celluloid. The Raid 2 indisputably deserves recognition as one of the paramount action works of the twenty-first century.
Though its violence is unremitting, the film operates with an unexpected aesthetic sophistication, balancing brutality with a deliberate grace. This is a cinematic experience that both confronts and reciprocates the spectator, propelling the genre of action into a newly elevated domain of visual and narrative artistry.
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