The best thing I saw last week was The Raid 2. And WOW. What an amazing action film. The Raid was such a step up from a lot of the cliché action schlock that Hollywood had been churning out that I was afraid that coming back with The Raid 2 there might be some disappointment. Not at all. The story is better. The violence is crazier. And it seems almost impossible, but yes, the fight scenes are even better.

Having done a little reading and a bit of research mostly on IMDB I found out quite a bit about The Raid and The Raid 2. Mainly that the movie I just saw The Raid 2 was the film these individuals set out to create first but had to go back to the drawing board to create something with a more limited budget when funding fell through. Lucky for us that gave us The Raid. Simple enough, a SWAT team enters a building filled with bad guys and you find out maybe some of the cops are also on the bad guys side. Protagonist Rama proceeds to scale building whilst handing out ass whoppings. And I can’t stress this enough, if you haven’t seen the first Raid film go rent it, watch it with that buddy that says action films can’t surprise him anymore, you’ll both enjoy it.

So with the success of The Raid writer/director Gareth Evans is able to bring our intrepid hero Rama, played by the super talented Iko Uwais, back to the screen and present us his original vision. A vision that culminates in a fight scene between two men that Gareth Evans spent 6 weeks designing, contains 196 shots, took 10 days to film, and I have to say was well worth it as it might be the best fight ever put on film. Hands down I will say it is the best knife fight I’ve ever seen in a movie.

Now I’ll admit it’s not all good, I hate subtitles. My standard gripe would be that I hate reading foreign films. It’s true, no matter how much I love movies a big part of me is still that lazy American that would rather watch a dubbed film with slightly different dialogue to save myself from having to read. In all honesty in action films I hate that I can’t seem to keep up with what people are saying while they are kicking the crap out of each other. If this is your worry and or problem, fear not, once the elbows start flying during the fights in The Raid 2 the talking stops. None of that annoying dialogue to distract from the beautiful fight sequences these people created.

So to summarize; bad ass cops and gangsters, straight anime brought to life villains, gun blasts directly to the face in shots where the cameras don’t shy away but instead show the splash, compact fights in cars and bathroom stalls, an epic mud battle. The Raid 2 brings you everything you never knew you always wanted in a fight film. Go see it!