The Raid 2

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Markgway
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The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

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grim_tales
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by grim_tales »

2.5 hours?! Woah :o
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Markgway
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

Yeah, that seems crazy long.
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saltysam
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by saltysam »

While the first was overhyped i did enjoy it and this second one is getting stellar reviews so far.looking forward to it....my mind is hazy but did we did establish the director used to post here back in the day??
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by grim_tales »

Yeah, I'm sure he used to be a member here in one of BnB's previous incarnations :D
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Markgway
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

ghevans, IIRC.
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HungFist
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by HungFist »

Some year you'll be talking "didn't that crazy guy who was just arrested in Japan for prostituting high school girls use to post here?" :lol:

The Raid 2 looks and sounds very promising. The word is that it's pretty damn epic, and much better than the original.

As for the UK rating I suppose that was the uncut version and not the MPAA cut version that was submitted. Probably uncut, though, I don't think there's any westernized version this time around.
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grim_tales
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by grim_tales »

The trailer looks fantastic.
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by grim_tales »

Markgway wrote:ghevans, IIRC.
Oh yeah, that's it :)
hanshotfirst1138
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by hanshotfirst1138 »

What did happen to the Asian DVD Guide? It was a good kind for info that I have sift through Google to find now. Don't get me wrong, you guys are great :D.
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Markgway
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

It died.
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hanshotfirst1138
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by hanshotfirst1138 »

Damn, it was a good mine of info. I'm constantly sifting though Google to try to find out about comparable releases, downmixes, etc. you can find some here, some at dvdcompare, some at Kung Fu Cinema, etc, but I thought it was one of the best places to find info. Why'd it did, financial reasons? It seemed like it was still being used here and there.
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

No idea. The site just disappeared, as did Muldoon, it's owner.

One for Unsolved Mysteries...
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hanshotfirst1138
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by hanshotfirst1138 »

Damn, it was a gold mine for info. I keep sifting through Google, blu-ray.com, the forums here, dvdcompare, Kung Fu cinema, and elsewhere trying to find damned info about stuff, it had so much simply because it'd been around for so long. God, this fandom is masochistic, damn distributors. Wonder what the hell happened? Muldoon doesn't post anywhere else?

Saw this at my local multiplex, amazingly enough. Sony have major balls for taking this wide, and apparently it didn't pay off for them, I guess it's tanking, Americans still don't like those damn subtitles. And if this won't change their mind, nothing will. Anyway, HK alum Bruce Law Lai-Yin worked on some of the car stunts. This was WAY too long, it's Godfather-like pretensions clashing with its action movie simplicity sometimes, but it was a turbo-charged thrill ride all the same. Some of the stunts were totally insane, and though Evans' pornographic level of detail violence got a little tiresome (Did we really need to see his face blown off with a shotgun in the frame?) sometimes, some of the fight choreography was truly impressive and he has a nice sense of when to slow things down. His style is sort of a mix of John Carpenter and Yuen Woo Ping, but he doesn't have that light-on-his-feet quality Yuen had at his best. Still, I'm amazed that a subtitled movie hit my local multiplex next to The Muppets and Captain America. If it's there for more than a week, I'll be very surprised.
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Masterofoneinchpunch
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Masterofoneinchpunch »

Of course in my town of 200,000+ it does not show (nor any of the close theaters as well). The first one did not show here either.
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

I'll check it out once it hits video.

I wasn't as impressed with the original as most others... and I'm expecting more of the same this time out.
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Masterofoneinchpunch »

Any useful discussion on this film at KFC has delved into animated gif postings as a retort if anything non-complementary is said. Which then lends me to post here for my first thoughts on the film.

I'm going to give this film some more thought. I'm certainly not in the hyperbole camp that this movie has generated. I'm currently debating on thinking whether I like it or not (**½ to *** out of ****). This movie has some significant flaws. In some ways this movie is analogous to Special ID where the fight scenes are the highlight of the movie though even those tend to be problematic.

The fight scenes are overall quite good. The car chase scene reminded me of the one in Special ID including the use of close combat fighting. Often the cinematography can be quite interesting with the use of angles and camera movement. But sometimes it overdoes the shakiness. Whenever I find myself wondering “why is the camera moving from side-to-side for no reason” or “stop that movement so I can see the movements of the martial artists” I tend to find that a fault in filmmaking. The over-the-top violence delves into sadism (on all sides even when some of the characters should not be) which is off-putting to me.

I have no issues with long films. I just watched Ben-Hur again. It is what you do with the allotted time. For a film of this length I wonder how they were not able to put a decent plot together. Gareth Evans is certainly not Martin Scorsese or Johnnie To in dealing with underworld codes or characterization. I do not expect him to be, but I do expect more humanization than stock characters of Crime boss, Crime boss’s son wanting to take over and mole. You get a little of this with Rama’s “I guess suffering wife” and Uco’s later “sad” moment, but they feel perfunctory. Secondary to the mayhem of the next fight scene. Overall there is a feeling of nihilism prevalent in the perverseness of bloodlust. I wish there was more feeling.
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Markgway
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by Markgway »

I re-watched the original last week on TV.

This time I gave it **½ up from my original **.

The flaws are still the same, but, I guess, with my expectations adjusted they bothered me less.

Still don't like CGI blood or handycam, but the fights are properly intense.
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Re: The Raid 2

Post by HungFist »

As usual, I'm a bit late with non-Japanese films

The Raid 2: Berandal (Indonedia, 2014) [DCP] - 4/5

The bastards edited this down for R15 in Japan (just like last year Maniac was censored because the distributor wanted to target teenage girls) but I was thankfully able to catch it uncut in Tokyo (limited R18 release). It's a fine film, as has been stated by nearly everyone, so I don't need to repeat the praise, rather I will point out the few small gripes I had with the film.

1) It's a good storyline for an action film, but to call this a truly great gangster film like some have? Nah, as a gangster story it's merely functional, hardly original (e.g. the scene in the snow, and what precedes it, is clichéd beyond belief).

2) Why edit the baseball/hammer/assassin fight all into one scene? That's three fine scenes losing some of their impact when they are served in hectic fast food style instead of allowing them to stand on their own feet.

3) The CGI blood is better than usual here, but it still looks pretty CGI...

4) As far as the visuals and soundtrack goes, the film is again functional, but certainly not masterclass.

5) They could have done a bit more with the Japanese yakuza gang. If they went through the trouble of hiring Japanese actors to play Japanese yakuza, they could have written some more yakuza-specific twists to the storyline to make the gang more original and given them more than 5 minutes of screentime.

But yeah, small gripes aside, it's a fine film and I liked it slightly better than the first movie.

Theatre ad for the R15 version
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