Like most of these more modern Asian action flicks this one runs super long at 2 and a half hours but somehow they manage to pull it off here without inducing sleep and/or boredom. The fight scenes, just like in the first film, are pretty exceptional. The action set-pieces, including an amazing car chase sequence, are shot really well and the best part is they keep the stupid c.g.i. to a minimum which probably wasn't easy to do in these current times. There are a couple of more cartoonish characters, a double-hammer swinging lass and a baseball hitting fellow, that reminded me of something that Quentin Tarantino would have thrown into one of his films, but they work here nonetheless. I put of watching this one for a while because the first movie was so good and I expected to be let down by the sequel but this one is at least equal, if not superior, to THE RAID just by virtue of how they made the plot a bit more complex and opened the world up to our main character(Iko Uwais) so now we get prison violence, mobster hijinks, barroom slaughters etc and it's all done with plenty of blood flowing craziness. It was also great to see Mad Dog(Yayan Ruhian) back as another equally bad-ass character here who takes out a whole slew of Japanese assassins in a pretty epic battle. One of the best martial-arts/action flicks I've seen in a long time. AKA THE RAID 2: BERANDAL and THE RAID: RETALIATION
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