ThereвЂ™s exactly one joke in the entire two-and-a-half-hour epic, when a henchman whose weapon of choice is a baseball bat hits a few balls with fatal precision. An ill-advised use of HandelвЂ™s stately вЂSarabandeвЂ™ will either bring to mind Stanley KubrickвЂ™s вЂBarry LyndonвЂ™ or trigger unintentional laughs at the unearned sombreness. Occasionally, Evans tries to mix up his tone heвЂ™s still working on that. Staminas are superhuman and the aesthetic is close to a live-action videogame, programmed with a refreshing eye for topographical clarity. (When a police chief complains about вЂbodies piling up all over the city,вЂ™ heвЂ™s not exaggerating.) As the film plays on, the artful brutality вЂ“ never less than intense вЂ“ varies only in terms of its setting: a warehouse, a four-door BMWвЂ™s interior, a subway car, an industrial kitchen, etc. YouвЂ™ll hear your crowdвЂ™s first wave of stunned applause after a muddy prison-yard showdown that results in a sizeable diminishment of the inmate population. He should rest easy: no other filmmaker on the planet can touch Evans for long-take beatdowns and wildly inventive flourishes that call to mind Jackie ChanвЂ™s heyday with 1992вЂ™s вЂSupercopвЂ™ and little since. Evans canвЂ™t pull off a simple conversation to save his bacon, and his unnecessarily complex вЂThe DepartedвЂ™вЂ“style set-up reveals a desperation to be taken seriously. Almost laughably, thereвЂ™s a plot here, mainly unrelated to the first film, involving a cop gone undercover (Iko Uwais), a gangsterвЂ™s showboating son (Arifin Putra) and a limping criminal overlord with a fetish for black leather gloves (Alex Abbad).

Delirium awaits action fans with British director-writer-editor Gareth EvansвЂ™s intoxicating sequel to 2011вЂ™s вЂThe RaidвЂ™ вЂ“ another Indonesian gangster film that alternates sequences of groundbreaking (and bonebreaking) combat with scenes of the most boring conference meetings imaginable.

Film the raid 2