Berandal (thug) - The Raid Part 2

Picked this up on Blu Ray now that it is out and good lord it was awesome. Definitely on par with the first one. Yeah it's an hour longer because it has a lot of story, but it is well done even if it is pretty standard crime lord stuff. Some of the scenes are incredible and I found myself going Ohhhh shit! out loud a few times.

The film feels a bit like a collage of action scenes almost to the point of abstraction (for instance there is a single scene in the snow even if not a single snowflake is seen before or after it!), the plot is also a collage of gangster movie tropes that takes a lot of screen time and is not 100% convincing, and there is is something about cruelty that I find a bit unsettling (a lot of the strikes, especially with knives, do not feel like they are meant to kill or to incapacitate the enemy for the fight: they are made to maim and be sure the guy never stands straight and/or walks again in his life).

Other than these three problems, we get a truck load of super high octane action, in a lot of different contexts with a lot of different styles and with consistently impressive choreography and athleticism.