So I just saw The Raid 2: Berandal and it was quite enjoyable. Some people are calling it the best action movie ever made and I'm not so sure about that one, but I did get my money's worth. To put it simply, The Raid 2 is structured quite differently from the first film, and because of that there's some things that are done much better, and some things that are done much worse.

Part of what made the first movie so great, is that it was straight up action with no bull in between. And that's not to say that expanding the story of the first one would automatically be bullshit, but based on the few scenes that did touch on the story, it made me glad that they kept it to a bare minimum, and focused on what the director excels at, and this director clearly excels at his fight scenes.
And this isn't just the case with the director but also the actors. They were all expertly crafted in their own choreography, but the actual performances ranged from passable to pretty good; which is pretty much how I'd rate this story scenes in general.None of them stood out as what I call bad, but if I was rating this movie on the story scenes alone, I'd probably be giving it a 6. Keep in mind that I'd have a similar rating for the story scenes in the first movie, but now instead of taking up a small fraction of the screen-time it's taking up about half it, and when I rate a movie I don't base my reading solely on my favourite parts of it. I rate the movie as the whole thing.

The first half-hour of the film was probably the least involving, and the last half hour was the most involving; and that's the case with both the story scenes, and the action scenes. It built up nicely, and the payoff was totally worth it. By not confining your story to just one building, you get a lot more freedom as to what type of scenes you are able to shoot, and this helped the movie tremendously especially closer to the end of it, but not everything that came out of that decision was a positive thing. The confinements of the first film, not only gave it charm, but it also helped mask some other problems that are exclusive to the genre. In most action movies, it kinda bothers me whenever the enemies conveniently decide to attack the main character one at a time, but when nearly every action scene in the entire movie takes place in a hallway, it suddenly starts to make a lot more sense.

In The Raid 2 I found myself getting taken out of the movie during one scene in particular. I found myself wondering, why are you six people standing in the background on a deserted road, when there's nothing keeping you from all attacking him at once. I appreciate this movie is larger scale, but because of that, it leaves a lot more room for error. The woman singing karaoke was distractingly out of sync; The computer-animated snowfall was not convincing enough for a Canadian; At the beginning at the movie, what seems like a relevant tie-in to the first film, actually turns out to be forced and pointless. The lack of excessive story, and exposition in the first film allowed the action scenes to be more effective.

When you first watch it, it's not all too clear who the surviving characters are going to be; it brings a lot of tention to the fight scenes. When a character faces a threat, it's always better when that character's level and expandability is completely unknown. That was something that the first movie did quite well, but I don't feel as though that aspect appeared in the second movie at all. Sure it's still fun to watch one character beat everybody up, but it really takes away the fear consequence when you know that he's basically invincible.

In The Raid 2 there's no question, as to which characters are going to appear in the final scenes in the film; and that doesn't make it a bad movie by far, but it does add to the list of things that prevent it from being exceptional. And when I say not exceptional, I mean there are plenty of exceptional scenes within the film, but for me to call this movie exceptional overall they'd have to not be dragged down by the many above-average scenes accompanying them.

Obviously, the majority of the fight choreography, is about as amazing as you should expect now for Gareth Evans film; But what I really saw a noticeable improvement in, was the camera work during those fight scenes. It's impressive to watch the camera go through windows with the characters and often match their angle of rotation; and the level of coordination to pull off some of the shots in the driving scene was pretty mind-boggling. The use of music was generally great, and really helped with the tone. And there are a few scenes where I found myself glad, that they chose not to use music I also like how they introduced two intimidating, and strange characters with signature weapons. It made the movie feel more cool without it being too serious, and almost gave of a kind of Kill Bill vibe.

But other than that it was mostly just a fun, and entertaining action movie. And I didn't leave the theater feeling disappointed by it, but it had a lot of potential to be much better than it was. The story scenes in between the action, only felt engaging once they started to become relevant, and necessary closer towards the end of the film. Obviously the first film felt more organic in a sense, because they had a constant objective of needing to escape; but in this movie it felt like they were just constantly coming up with new excuses, as to why there should be a fight scene taking place.

Now, I know that the issues I had with the movie are ones that might not bother everybody, but it's important to recognize that there are elements that gave me extra appreciation for the first film, that simply aren't in the second. Personally I think this movie would have worked much better, if it started fresh in its own series. A few tie-ins to the first film not only felt a little forced to me, but they were kind of irrelevant. You could even kept the same an actor if you really wanted, and I don't think anybody would really be bothered by that; not only would it stop people like me from endlessly comparing this film to the first, BUT IT ALSO WOULDN'T BE DISTRACTING TO SEE THE EXACT SAME ACTOR, PLAY TWO DIFFERENT CHARACTERS. Like, I get it he's got a cool face and he fights well, and you wanted to use him again, even though you killed off his character in the first movie. But if this movie with just a different story, and not The Raid 2, then I wouldn't have spent a significant portion of the movie wondering, "Is that the same person, or am I really racist?"; granted if the title was anything other than The Raid 2, this movie wouldn't have made nearly as much money;
but hey, you gotta pay the rent somehow.

Overall I really enjoyed it.