With the recent announcement that Gareth Evans’ Indonesian martial arts sequel The Raid 2 (frankly we’re tired of listing all of the film’s alternate titles) would be receiving a March 28, 2014 release in stateside theaters, you may think it a bit greedy to want a new trailer so soon after the news. Well you’d be wrong, because here it is, Raid 2‘s international tailer.
The new trailer brings us just the kind of limb-snapping, face-crushing, finely choreographed fighting we’ve come to expect from Evans and star Iko Uwais – with some sensational uses of hammers and a baseball bat – but it also gives us a better look at the story. Uwais’s police officer, Rama, goes undercover in a prison to get close to Uco (Arifin Putra), the son of a powerful crime lord played by Tio Pakusadewo.
Is all this story good for The Raid 2? An odd question, yes, but one that needs to be asked. The amazing thing (one of them, anyway) about the original Raid, was how minimal it kept its story – basically a bunch of cops storm an apartment complex full of criminals to catch a bad guy – yet managed to be wholly entertaining by filling the gaps in plot with strikingly intense action scenes. Could a more complicated plot bog down the sequel? We’ll see in March – or in January, if you’re going to Sundance this year.
Leave a Comment