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The world of contemporary martial arts cinema continually re-invents itself every generation. And yet, The Raid 2 towers above the rest. Both The Raid and The Raid 2 showcase some of the best martial arts stunt sequences ever put to film. In fact, The Raid 2 is considered so good, the director Gareth Evans has said there's no way to top it for a potential The Raid 3. But how is it that The Raid 2 was able to pull of stunt work to such perfection?
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the world of contemporary martial arts cinema is an ever-evolving beast, one which continually
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reinvents itself every generation. And yet, one film towers over its creative brethren
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The Raid 2. The film is an epic in nearly every sense of the word, and despite being a box office
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smash, critical darling, and creative tour de force, it hasn't spawned a third entry into the
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franchise. Why? Because The Raid 2 can't be topped. Let's get to the chase. You could pick
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almost any fight in The Raid 2 as an example of how amazing the film is, but let's look at the
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Rama vs. the Assassin's Kitchen fight sequence. This roughly seven-minute fight scene is a balletic
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cacophony of violence and masterful storytelling. The film's protagonist, Rama, played inimitably by
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rising martial arts superstar Eco Uys is attempting to get Bejo, the film's primary
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villain. But first, he has to take out a fearsome henchman, played by C. Sep Arif Rahman. The two
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characters silently, slowly square off against each other, preparing to fight. They begin using
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highly formal jabs, blocks, and strikes that are standard in Sealot. There are hundreds of
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different styles in Sealot. The main components are powerful strikes. This fight starts with formal exhibitions of Silat Halimal, which is a Tiger-style version of Silat
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Director Gareth Evans and crew selected Tiger-style because when filmed, it looks the most vicious
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These tete-a-tete's are exchanged until things escalate into Rama throwing the assassin through a glass door and into a wine storage room
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From here the fight devolves into a street brawl where both performers martial arts skills are put to the test The energy and momentum of the fight completely shifts when the assassin draws out twin Karambit knives
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The fight reaches a new level of ferocity, with every potential slash possibly being the end of Rama's life
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Until, after multiple power dynamic reversals, each man ends up in control of one knife
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This ultimately crescendos into one of the most memorable knife fights ever made
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One of the key elements that sets Evan's martial arts films apart from other action films
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is that he and his team break down the fights into sections, and then attempts to give each section moments of visual interest and excitement
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that will make the audience cringe. This could be a particularly vicious moment
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or someone falling from multiple stories and breaking their back. We cheesily refer to them as punchlines when we're designing the fight scenes
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and he tries to give every fight sequence four or five of these moments
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to juxtapose against the quiet or more slower moments in the fight. This kitchen fight is possibly the best knife fight ever put to film
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which you can say about almost everything in Raid 2. Every scene is basically the best version of that type of scene
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The opening mud fight in the prison? Yes. Drug money collection gone wrong
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So inventive and kinetic. The showdown with Hammer Girl and Baseball Batman
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One of the coolest fights ever put to screen. It begs the question, who made this film and how
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How was this marvel accomplished? Well, Gareth Evans is originally from South Wales
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but moved to Indonesia after he took a job directing a documentary about Silat
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He quickly realized that Silat deserved more appreciation abroad. In 2009, he released the film Mirantau
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It was intended to showcase Silat as an art form and showcase the young Iko Uwais But ultimately despite some highly impressive fight scenes the film didn exactly become a classic It did however make some profit which is all that matters Their next
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project, The Raid Redemption, would give both Evans and Weiss careers. It's a bonanza of martial
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arts mastery. The plot? A police officer has to fight from the bottom of a building to the top of
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a building, and chaos ensues. It's simple, it's direct, and it's great. While the idea of this
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film is as straightforward as it gets, the execution was revolutionary. The crew utilized
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a system developed by Mike Figgis for his movie Time Code, where they used a circular camera
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holding device, called a fig rig, in order to turn the camera rapidly and follow actors performing
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highly complex choreography at a very fast speed. Evans has repeatedly said he views martial arts
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films as being closest spiritually related to Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire dance-based musicals
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And all throughout his films, you can feel him planning the choreography like dance numbers
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Much like many musicals, the action and shot lists of Evans' films are meticulously planned
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In fact, prior to shooting the finished film, Evans filmed a no-budget version for the movie
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almost a dummy version of all the fights instead of an animatic or storyboard. He'll literally
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shoot all of the fight scenes in a local gym with the actors, edit it, and treat this first
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drafted the film as the storyboards for the eventual finished product. After the raid was a runaway success, the topic of sequels was raised. The raid 2 was originally
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going to be a standalone film. Evans had been trying to find the production budget for this
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project for close to two years prior to the raid. Titled Burandal, Hooligan in Indonesian
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it was intended to be a sweeping epic about a man who goes to prison, befriends the son of a mob
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boss and then get sucked into a gangland war It was deemed too complicated too expensive and not commercial enough by potential investors However after the success of The Raid Evans realized that if he just made the protagonist
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of the story an undercover cop, it would work perfectly as a sequel
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This is the first stroke of genius for The Raid 2. You can't outdo the brilliantly simple
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high concept of the original film, so why even try? Do a gangland epic as the sequel. No one
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will expect that. The opening scene of the film is a perfect testament to this idea
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It features the film's big bad Bejo killing Rama's brother. It's a moody, atmospheric, tense scene that doesn't feature any of the martial arts at all
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Even the first shot of the field slowly approaching Carr and freshly dug grave feels like a statement
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that we're not going to be stuck in a single building for the whole story. The way this film expands and develops Rama's character gives him a tragic emotional core
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and then pushes him far beyond the breaking point is a maturity in storytelling that most
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action films just simply don't ever have the ambition to attempt. The Raid 2 is a damn near perfect movie, and because sometimes the good guys do win
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it went on to a highly lucrative box office run. However, it never manifested a sequel
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despite Evans repeatedly talking about a third entry in the franchise that would have seen warring gang factions duking it out in the Indonesian jungle
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So why is that? Simple. Evans just doesn't think he can top The Raid 2
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and he's put that chapter of his life behind him. In an interview he gave to Impact Online in 2016, he said
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whether it was a conscious decision or not, moving back to the UK felt like closing a chapter on that franchise
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We ended the story pretty neatly in part two. You have to respect when someone knows enough is enough
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And when you've made something so impressive, there's nothing else to say