Now, Evans has gone back to his gangster movie, styling it as a sequel to The Raid called The Raid 2: Berandal. Something of a moviemaking miracle, it was an example of the kind of narrative economy only the best movies manage. The Raid: Redemption told the story of a squad of cops trying to arrest a drug kingpin holed up in an apartment building populated entirely by criminals. It was the best thing that could have happened. The follow-up was supposed to be an epic gangster drama, but Evans couldn’t raise the funds and decided to shoot something more contained instead. But while shooting one of the action scenes in an elevator between Uwais and a silat teacher, Yayan Ruhian, Evans had the idea to bring Ruhian on board for his next movie as a co-star and action choreographer.
The action was energetic, Uwais had charisma to burn, and the story was fun exploitation fare. It was called Merantau and served as a calling card for both star and director. The violence is not for everyone, but for those with the stomach for it, the film offers a balletic vision of hand-to-hand mayhem, with surprising emotional shading in its cast of good guys, villains and hammer-toting psychopaths.Back in 2009, Gareth Evans and a former cell-phone service technician, Iko Uwais, made a movie about silat, Indonesia’s martial art. But though it is more ambitious in scope, The Raid 2 remains, primarily, a visceral pulp action movie, and this is where it truly soars. Evans depicts a more complex, Godfather-style power struggle, in which the relative equilibrium of Jakarta's gangland is threatened when Bangun upstart Uco (Arifin Putra) starts making moves to depose his more cautious father. Though the earnest Uwais was the obvious, clean-cut hero of the first film, here the canvas is much broader. This excellent sequel continues the franchise in spirit only, with rookie officer Rama (Iko Uwais) being whisked off within hours of the first film's end and sent under cover to gain the trust of the violent Bangun crime family.
Made in Jakarta by ex-pat Welshman Gareth Evans, 2011's The Raid was a first-class fusion of throwback B-movie and bone-cracking martial arts flick, telling the story of a police raid on a mob-run high-rise.
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