The first The Raid was a genuine eye-opener that gave new meaning to the word “visceral”. Cinema-goers who have been inured to sanitized Hollywood fighting were reminded that physical violence causes actual pain and damage. You couldn’t help but wince at the snapped bones, crushed cartilage and mutilated tissue that are the inevitable result of people seriously trying to kill one another. It turned the limitation of its low budget to its advantage, setting the entire film within the confines of a single apartment complex and focusing on the fighting with laser-like intensity.

This sequel was written and directed by same person, British-born Gareth Evans, and stars the same charismatic martial arts prodigy, Iko Uwais. The main difference is that it has a much bigger budget. By rights, it should at least match the original. But it is only a pale shadow of the great martial arts epic its predecessor is. It is, I think, a salutary example of what happens when you give a director so much money that he can do anything he wants and he then proceeds to go hog wild with his ideas with no restraint whatsoever.

To be fair, all that money does buy lots of nice things including some very impressive sets, cool special effects and genuinely great cinematography. The film visually impresses right from the opening cinemascopic shot of an Indonesian sugar cane field and builds on from there. The long tracking shots of the prison fight in the mud, the dynamic movements of the camera during the car chase scene, even the subtle interplay of light to give concrete stark, forbidding textures, must all have cost a lot of money.

But much more has been lost than is gained. The plot is predictable tripe that tries too hard to be unnecessarily complex. It also has terrible pacing and suffers from giving insufficient screen-time to the protagonist in favour of a host of new characters who the director appears to believe are cooler. That Iko’s character is supposedly an undercover police officer is mentioned at the beginning, largely forgotten in the middle of the film and abruptly picked up again near the end. It doesn’t help that while Iko is a great martial artist, he is unconvincing as a dramatic actor. Co-fight choreographer Yayan Ruhian confusingly returns as a different character whose story is ultimately superfluous. Coming in at two and a half hours runtime, the film is far too long for its own good.

But the worst sin of all is that by doggedly pursuing the rule of cool, Evans has forgotten everything that made the first film unique. The single apartment complex may not have cost much, but it made the film feel realistically grounded and the director made wonderful use of the limited space. I loved how the characters had to move up and down the stairs depending on the situation, how they even blew holes between floors and hid in the walls. You always had a fantastic situational awareness of everything that was going on.

All this is thrown out in The Raid 2. We have sugar cane fields, the streets of Jakarta, sumptuously appointed ballrooms, abandoned buildings that wouldn’t look out of place amidst an apocalypse, a train carriage and even a snowy alley? Evans clearly has lost interest in creating a consistent, believable world. Instead this is a comic book world, inspired perhaps by such films as Kill Bill and Sin City. The fact that we even have Japanese gangsters just rams this home.

Another thing that I really liked about the first film was that the police team went in loaded for bear. They had plenty of guns and even grenades and they actually used them! But as their numbers are whittled down and their weapons are depleted, they are forced to resort to knives, improvised weapons and traps and finally hand-to-hand combat. It reinforced the sense of desperation in their struggle for simple survival.

In the sequel, once again the rule of cool trumps common sense. Gangsters attempt assassinations with melee weapons when it would have made much more sense to bring guns. Iko’s character stupidly leaves the weapons of his enemies on the floor and fights unarmed. Bejo’s trio of elite assassins were clearly created with their specific signature weapons in mind but they are comic book characters, not the grounded, realistic fighters of the previous film. That hammer girl is played by a female model who has no martial arts training and shows it just proves how far we have fallen from the authenticity of the first film.

This means that while the fight choreography is still fantastic, the violence is still painful and Iko’s moves are as always a joy to behold, it is now much harder to care about the fights and believe in them. I am also puzzled by why the director would display the Chekov’s gun of introducing Japanese gangsters but then fail to provide the payoff of a silat vs. Japanese martial art match. Surely that would be a more interesting fight than against a silly poseur who thinks hitting a baseball with a bat makes for a superior ranged weapon than a gun?

Overall while The Raid 2 remains entertaining, I find myself deeply disappointed by it. I know that a third film is inevitable but I find it more likely that Evans will continue to build bigger and splashier than to go back to the basics of the first film. If this is the case, I don’t think there is any reason to watch it.