OMFG. What a trip! So nice to watch a non-cgfied, no wire-fu and utterly brutal action movie and so happy that the movie is showing in Australia. My main concerns going in were that they would try to hard to top the action from the first one that it reaches Ong Bak 2 levels of stupidity and that the story might become too convoluted. I'm happy to say that while the story is not as tight as the first Raid/Serbuan Maut, the action scenes are way too awesome.
WHAT I LIKED
Anytime the story feels like its getting boring, we get some crazy action scene that has the audience wincing/laughing along. Stunts that made me go wow instead of CG that makes me fall asleep.
Humour helps a lot in such an incredibly brutal movie. Let's just say I won't be watching Indonesian porn.
The undercover storyline did provide some moments of tension.
Did I mention I love the brutality?
The mud fight scene.
The Raid 2 has got a car action scene that's even better than the one in Ronin and Bourne Supremacy. Gareth Evans knows how to direct his action.
Glass corridor fight. Truly WTF pulse pounding action.
The kitchen fight is truly a thing of beauty.
CG blood is not too over the top obvious and in some cases necessary cause the old burst the blood bag trick would have too much blood for some of the violence in this movie. I still don't like CG blood but it wasn't too distracting.
Some very inventive and painful looking camera angles and long cut action sequences.Nothing as long as Old Boy's corridor fight or Tom Yum Goong no cut fight up the stairs but still impressive.
You will never look at a hammer the same way again.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE
The WTF snow scene that took me out of the movie and the fight leading up to it was unnecessarily long. As a fan of the first movie, its nice fanservice but ultimately the length doesn't enhance the story or its pacing and not to mention the snow...
A bit too many bad guys running at hero with arms in the air but that's always the problem with 1 vs 20 fights.
Gareth Evan's shaky cam framing is still not as masterful as Paul Greengrass's but its still better than everyone else's.
The Goto family office looks so cheap for a gang that controls half of Jakarta.
Endo Kenichi, Matsuda Ryuhei and Kitamura Kazuki are little more than glorified cameos, unless of course this leads to them playing bigger roles in Raid 3. At least Abe Hiroshi got to kick ass in Chocolate.
SUMMARY
Must watch for action movie fans. You can't get action this awesome anywhere else. My mind is still buzzing from all the ass kicking, neck slicing I just witnessed.
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