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Holy cripes! Once the lightening speed fighting starts, this is a relentlessly stunning, white knuckled big screen actioner that continually leaves a paying audience gasping for breath. Never mind that Evans' slightly wobbly screenplay makes more of a deliberate effort to inject moments of high drama and character development than seen last time. It's nice to see, but The Raid 2: Berandal isn't about drama. Meryl Streep likely wasn't short-listed for this flick. This is pure testosterone-driven, gore-drenched eye candy for consumption after a lousy work week. Rage-diffusing, ultra-violent feel good escapism, just in time for tax season. The Raid 2: Berandal is about watching one guy get busy punching, kicking, shooting and chopping through countless legions of crooks, thugs and gunmen, occasionally taking a short break to let cheering movie goers wipe the spilled popcorn and Snapple off their laps - before Rama resets to mince and repeat.

Iko Uwais' speedy Pencak Silat skills are absolutely eye-popping, masterfully captured and phenomenally showcased by cinematographers Matt Flannery and Dimas Imam Subhono throughout. No shaky cam or lame fight fakery here, you see everything. Clearly, and up-close. Each carefully choreographed fight scene unleashes its powerfully gritty blow-by-blow dance of unrelenting carnage, whether Uwais is fending off dozens of attackers at a time or facing off against more highly skilled foes who are armed with talon-like traditional kerambit blades and down and dirty claw hammers. Specifically, The Raid 2: Berandal features a couple of outstanding close quarters fights, a no-holds barred prison brawl that just keeps escalating, and easily one of the best car chases seen in movies in years. All the same, this sequel does a remarkable job of finding reasonable enough balance between glorifying horrific graphic violence and celebrating the blunt force finesse of Indonesia's ancient martial art.

However, this picture does suffer from pushing its already high suspension of disbelief into sporadic bouts of contrived goofiness. The worst is when a character sprung from prison makes secret phone calls by switching his cell phone's SIM card with one he suddenly pulls from his mouth. Like a magic trick. Is that a thing? Where did it come from? Was it stuck in his teeth? Is there a deleted scene where he's eating Cracker Jacks and a cell phone SIM card was the secret prize? You see this laughable thing happen, and the mystery of the SIM card immediately becomes an unnecessary distraction from what's unfolding on the big screen. Was that SIM card hidden in his mouth during earlier scenes where he's talking? If so, how did he manage to talk normally without inadvertently chewing on it? What kind of saliva-proof sliver of electronics is this SIM card that it worked in the cell phone after being in his mouth for however long it was in his mouth for? Was that SIM card also hidden orally all the time he was incarcerated, or was he hiding it, uh, in another body cavity? Up his nose? Between his toes? Where the heck has that SIM card been all this time? It's an unfortunately stupid plot hole.

Definitely a fiercely entertaining sequel for extreme action-lovers and fight fans over-all, The Raid 2: Berandal is an exceptionally compelling - if somewhat contrived - cinematic showcase of Indonesia's high velocity martial art, Pencak Silat. Check it out on the big screen if you can, and be sure to watch for the next installment reportedly featuring Ong-bak (2003) trilogy star and Muay Thai fighter Tony Jaa. Reviewed 04/14, © Stephen Bourne, moviequips.ca.

The Raid 2 is rated 18A by the Ontario Film Review Board, citing detailed gory/grotesque images, coarse language, slurs, sexual references, tobacco use, frequent and/or prolonged portrayals of graphic violence, and limited instances of brief, visually explicit portrayals of violence, and is rated 16+ by la Régie du Cinéma in Québec.


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showtimes: http://www.google.ca/movies?near=kanata-ottawa&hl=en&view=map&date=0

REFERENCE:

Website: http://www.sonyclassics.com/theraid2/
Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZZmUVWVc0c
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2265171/
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raid_2:_Berandal
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheRaidUS


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