Gareth Evans' The Raid 2 certainly has better action scenes that the first movie. The martial arts fights are more brutal and energetic, the moments of gore and dismemberment more gruesome, and it has the added benefit of a truly bonkers car chase. And yet, The Raid 2 is vastly inferior to The Raid: Redemption for the sole reason that it cannot tell a coherent story to save its own life. Whereas the first film followed the succinct, simple plot of a group of police officers trying to escape an apartment complex full of killers, this film weaves a wandering, complicated tale of gang rivalries, Machiavellian backstabbing, and undercover cops. Evans may be able to put together a great fight scenes, but he fails as a story teller. So many characters and scenes begin without establishment, leaving us to wonder what's going on and who the heck are all these people. Consider how the main character, a crusading undercover cop, begins his mission to infiltrate a crime syndicate by getting arrested so he can buddy up with the boss' incarcerated son. The film cuts to him sitting in a prison cell. The crime he supposedly committed to get in jail happened off-screen. How did he get in jail? What is he doing in this small room? And why are a small army of people beating the door down trying to kill him? We simply don't know. The fight scenes in this film are better than ever, but everything else drags it down.
5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment