Return of the Raid

Gareth Evans makes his sprawling Indonesian crime epic, and it’s glorious

Though not due to an incredibly original premise, “The Raid” (2011) was a game changer. Basically, a squad of cops infiltrates a derelict tower block in Jakarta run by a ruthless drug lord. They have to fight their way through an army of machete-wielding berserker assassins, junkie tenants, and unseen snipers to escape. It’s pretty bad-ass. But, more important, the execution of the lean plot was like a gauntlet thrown down not just for discerning genre audiences, but for pretty much all other action films, too, for the past and for the future, at which to gawk.

The film’s director and writer, Gareth Evans, captured the visceral, frenetic carnage wrought by his long-time star, Iko Uwais (utilizing the martial art known as pencak silt), with a fluidity and cohesion that pretty much qualified as a new visual syntax for action filmmaking. I was telling total strangers to see it. See it right now, if you haven’t. I’ll wait.

Back? Good.

With “The Raid 2,” Evans ups the ante on the world he created in almost every way, though the kernel of the story itself is still fairly uncomplicated.

Rama (Uwais), after escaping the events of the first film with his redeemed brother, Andi (whoops, spoiler alert), immediately has to leave his family (again) and go to work for a secret (and fairly merciless) arm of the police that is trying to root out pervasive corruption on the force.

The drug dealer Rama just took down (“The Raid 2” starts, ostensibly, two hours after the end of the first one) used to work for an up-and-coming crime lord named Bejo (Alex Abbad), who summarily takes his pound of flesh by executing Rama’s brother, Andi (Donny Alamsyah).

To avenge Andi, protect his wife and child, and get to the root of police corruption, Rama is forced to go undercover as Yuda, a petty criminal with wicked ass-kicking skills. He gets himself arrested and serves a two-year stint in prison in order to befriend the incarcerated Uco (Arifin Putra), heir to Bangun (Tio Pakusodewo), the head of Jakarta’s second-biggest crime syndicate.

But that’s where it gets more complicated, and with “The Raid 2” Edwards has certainly expanded his narrative scope, creating a mafia epic with real dramatic weight. Japanese and Indonesian cartels, police corruption, the politics and power that get upended when one man wants subvert the hierarchy—these are the archetypal themes and characters that frame the story, which border on Shakespearian.

All is woven between the bone-crunching, vibrantly shot and choreographed action sequences that are trademark of Edwards and Uwais. It’s such a different film from its tense, cloistered predecessor; a different animal with familiar stripes. But those stripes are still blood-red.

It should go without saying that the fight sequences and action set pieces are uniformly amazing. Unlike its predecessor, the action is more judiciously meted out in “The Raid 2.” But from close-quarters combat in a grungy prison (including a mud-soaked yard riot that might be one of a kind) to a harrowing car chase and a series of battles against charmingly psychotic assassins like Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle) and Baseball Bat Man (Very Tri Yulisman), the film satisfyingly builds on each to pay off with some crowd-pleasing moments. The wildly kinetic fight choreography and unabashed violence are brutal and top-notch—a real plus from where I sit.

Iko Uwais is compelling as Rama while Alex Abbad, as the delightfully evil Bejo, is another standout. Fans of the first film will be tickled by the return of Yayan Ruhian (Mad Dog from “The Raid”) as the more thoughtfully written yet equally deadly Koso, an assassin with a broken-hearted past. The addition of Takashi Miike regular, Ken’ichi Endo will please “Visitor Q” fans (all 10 of you). Another star of the original, the great score from Mike Shinoda, sadly, doesn’t return, though Shinoda’s co-writer Joseph Trapanese ably makes up for his absence with his pulsing, ominous soundtrack.

For fans, “The Raid 2” is like an early Christmas present, and for everyone, is an unqualified action masterpiece.

One of the best documentaries of 2013 (a year thick with amazing documentaries, including the Morris/Herzog-produced powerhouse, “The Act of Killing”) was, unsurprisingly, made by Errol Morris.

As a tonal sibling to “The Fog of War” (2003), with “The Unknown Known” Morris revisits another architect of a conflict that no one is really sure should have happened: in this case, Iraq and Bush-era Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

During a post-9/11 propaganda campaign, the Bush administration egged the U.S. on against Saddam Hussein, whose with promises of WMDs, costs offset by oil revenues, and the fawning support of liberated citizens that have gone (at the time of this writing) totally unfulfilled. It was a history that, as it unfolded, spawned some of Rumsfeld’s most memorable quotes (including the titular gem) with zingers like, “The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.” Wrap your head around that one for a second. That’s a mind that discounts nothing.

This becomes evidently clear over the course of Morris’s thorough and, frankly, charming interviews with Rummy, which reveal a man so sure of himself as to have almost zero use for doubt or self-reflection. Of course, when you think of the human toll he is partially responsible for, that’s also a little scary.

Morris exhibits his typical visual flair, giving artfully cinematic context to a man who, at the peak of his influence, was at once a square policy wonk, known for writing so many memos they became known as “snowflakes,” while also being pimped in the media as a quasi-sexy, virile, take-no-bullshit man’s man. He always did have that Eastwood squint. The fact is that Rumsfeld, the things he says, and his role in history are fascinating and the man himself is weirdly jovial about what would appear to be a feature-length critique.

But as an iconic documentarian, Morris has mastered the art of reporting without bias (even when he has one). With “The Unknown Known,” he doesn’t need to drive home a philosophical point about Rumsfeld. His subject does it for him.

“The Unknown Known” is now playing at the Circle Cinema. For show times and ticket information, visit circlecinema.com.