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The Raid 2: Berandal | 2014 | R | - 6.9.10

In this sequel a rookie police officer (Iko Uwais) goes undercover to take down a major Indonesian crime syndicate and a group of corrupt police and politicians. If he is unsuccessful, his wife and baby boy will die. Also with Alex Abbad, Julie Estelle, Tio Pakusadewo, Arifin Putra, Oka Antara, Cecep A. Rahman, Ryuhei Matsuda, Kenichi Endo and Kazuki Kitamura. Directed by Gareth Evans. In Chinese languages with English subtitles. [2:28]

SEX/NUDITY 6 - A pornographer has a warehouse set up with a curtained-off corner and a movie camera: scattered around, men and women at computers copy something indistinguishable and place DVDs into plastic cases featuring silhouettes of two people standing face-front, side-by-side (the gender unclear); a nude woman wearing only a black strapped-on erect leather phallus as long as her arm comes out from behind the curtained area and walks across the room, we see the bared buttocks and chest (it looks flat) of a person of indistinct gender on all fours inside the curtained area, the first woman walks back behind the curtain and her silhouette thrusts the phallus between the legs of the other person who is still on hands and knees (the phallus rubbing against the stomach of the person) as the movie camera points at the woman's bare backside.
 At a club, several women wear corsets, panties and garter belts that reveal cleavage and dance without moving much on stage. Two prostitutes wear sleeveless dresses ending mid-thigh that reveal their legs to the thigh and their V-necklines reveal cleavage. Several scenes feature men wearing sleeveless undershirts and knee-length boxers, or boxers only. A man strips to his black biking shorts, the camera pans back and the man pulls the shorts down, below the frame; we see his bare back and chest.
 A man tells a male employee to get the first man's son a girl to "[F-word deleted] problems out of his mind." A man says that he does not want to go to prison and fear a broom shoved up his anus every morning. A man says that white guys drink beer that is cheaper than the women (using a crude sexual term) and they pay for sex in the toilets (please see the Substance Use category for more details).

VIOLENCE/GORE 9 - A road in a bamboo field contains a freshly dug grave where a man wearing a burlap bag over his head is forced to kneel and a man with an automatic rifle next to the victim's head fires in close-up (we see green-red splatter as the camera cuts to an office scene) and it is implied that the man, already bloody over his face and bare chest, fell into the grave, dead. A man is shot in the temple in close-up and we see blood and brains splatter; the man falls into an open grave. A man and his adult son argue loudly about crime strategy in their office several times and during one of their arguments the father punches the son in the face several times, knocking him down, blackening his eyes, scraping his temples and cutting his face in several places; the son rises from the floor and the father slaps him over a dozen times in front of another man when the son pulls a handgun and points it at the camera before shooting the father in the face (a lot of blood gushes as the man's body falls on his back, dead) and the son shoots the henchman in the leg, making him shout in pain and fall.
 Prisoners and guards fight in a muddy prison yard in the rain, using martial arts, clubs, broom handles and hidden knives: punches, kicks and throws leave the men covered in mud and blood and one man's head rings loudly against a pole as he hits and falls, another man's knee breaks and bends the leg the wrong way amid screams while several other men receive bloody arm and chest wounds; two men fight, broom handle against metal spike, and both receive bloody arm wounds, a man receives a dripping throat wound and falls dead, while another man receives five bloody stab wounds to the chest and dies and many guards in riot gear run into the prison yard amid sirens and swinging clubs; a prisoner is shot dead at the top of the fence that he has climbed (no blood is evident) while another prisoner pulls a guard's mouth open and we see the jaw rip apart and blood flows beneath wild eyes and a man lying with his bloody face to the camera is pulled off-screen.
 Several bloody fight scenes feature dozens of men against one man in martial arts and automatic weapons battles: In four of these scenes one individual from each crowd of men pitted against the cop suffers facial injuries (two have their faces smashed into the sharp corner of cement ledges), one has his face smashed and slid over a hot grill and we see much mangled and raw flesh, one has his face slammed into a cement wall and fractured (with blood spreading), and another has his face and head split open with blood and gore splashing as his face smashes against the sharp edge of a bar. A warehouse scene depicts an argument between a man and another man who wants protection money; a third man reaches for a shotgun hidden under a table and a fourth man jumps across the table to grab him as he fires and hits no one; a martial arts fight ensues with punches, kicks, chokes, throws, broken legs and arms amid automatic gunfire (we see several dripping chest wounds and bloody hands and faces), a man runs, jumps through a shattering window into a hallway and the fight continues as the man chasing him grabs him and tosses him through another shattering window (one man receives a cut to the hand that bleeds) and we see one man with a bloody face and mouth, shirt and shorts lying face down on the floor; he then stands up, spits blood on the floor and falls dead. A crowded bar suddenly becomes silent as one man sits at a booth looks up to see dozens of men running toward him and he fights them all as they attack with martial arts moves, clubs, ball bats and knives and we see one man receive repeated fast punches to the head as he lies on the floor (presumably dead); the first man breaks a beer bottle and cuts another man's throat with it several times (blood flows) then faces two men in a snowy alley where he subdues the final two men before being slashed in the chest and stomach (an aerial view shows the fallen man face down in a wide pool of blood on the white snow). Men attack a taxi using metal bars, spikes and knives, killing the driver in rivulets of blood; the driver falls out of his window and beaten by men as the cab is pushed shattering the windows with loud crashes; a male passenger gets out of the taxi and is attacked by man; he fights off nine of them in a café where he leaves some dead and some unconscious.
 In a dining room a man grabs a shotgun from behind a vacant bar and tosses it to his partner as he grabs another rifle for himself; the first man fires at a man who enters, but misses and his partner shoots him in the leg three times, approaching the wounded man the partner blows his head open with his rifle (the victim's shoulder is already blown apart, raw and bloody) and we see brains fly away from the open skull toward a point off-screen; the partner shoots through a couch several times, expecting to hit the man who entered the room, but fails and the man behind the couch rises and hurls a curved knife into the chest of the partner, who stumbles forward into the other man who drives the knife deeper into the partner, killing him and his body slides to the floor (a wide pool of blood covers much of the floor).
 A man in a car flees from criminals in other cars, followed by several other autos and he pushes one of the cars at a fast pace into a highway entrance divider, crippling the car; on the highway, the cars ram one another and their passengers hang out windows to shoot automatic rifles that shatter car windows and one car overturns and slides through a building at the side of the road; a man fights four other men in a car drawing a lot of flowing blood from the faces of two of them as one of them falls out the side window and bounces on his head, presumably dead; a thug on a motorcycle receives a long burst of rifle fire into his face shield (we see gore as he falls dead).
 We hear voices shouting for help from inside a walk-in freezer while men are shown dragging five other men on their backs down a hallway; they line them up to kneel in a restaurant dining room where a man uses a box cutter to slit their throats -- we see four slits with pouring blood as the men in bloody shirts and one bare chest fall face down with gasps and thudding (the fifth murder occurs below frame and we hear the thud).
 In a private dining room a man tells a subordinate to have another man killed while a man in the outer hallway subdues three thugs with punches, kicks and a hook jammed into one man's mouth (the man falls off-screen and no blood is shown); a woman with two claw hammers and a man with a baseball bat attack the first man and a baseball sails by the man's head and lodges in a glass wall shattering the glass (we see that one of the woman's eyes is scarred-over) and the man subdues both the other man and the woman with martial arts punches, kicks and throws; as the ball-bat man sinks to a sitting position against a wall, the first man strikes his face with the bat, the bat lodging deep in the face and head as the body falls over in blood and gore and the man grabs the woman by the neck and breaks it, killing her.
 A man drags a ball bat along a street and attacks and kills three men (we see head wounds and blood flow) before killing four more men (additional blood flows from their heads and faces); the man then bats a baseball into the head of another man (we do not see the wound), splattering blood on another man's face; he backs the other man into a wall and beats the other man in the head six times (murder is implied). A woman pulls two claw hammers from her purse on a subway and attacks many men with knives running toward her; she rips each open at the shoulder, side, face, leg or back with large spurting blood showers (one blood spatter covers the camera lens); the woman reaches a trembling man with a briefcase and we see her slam a hammer toward the camera, suggesting that she kills the man and we see the woman's white dress covered in blood. We see blood spattering onto a bamboo blade in a field and after a short fight, and a man swings a pickaxe toward another man's head as the camera cuts away, implying murder and we see the body fall into a rectangular hole.
 A man picks up a machete and follows several younger men into an alley where he kicks and punches them, breaks arms and legs and chases the last man to a wooden fence; in close-up, we see the other side of the fence as a long bloody blade comes through it and we see blood and gore drip down our side of the fence as the blade pulls back and a body falls on the other side.
 A man sits in a toilet stall while many shouting men try to break the door down and when they succeed, he punches and kicks them all, knocking them out; one man's face hangs into the toilet, where he spits up blood (from an aerial view, we see the toilet bowl covered in rust and blood).
 A man drives a car through walls of a warehouse, throwing another man into a wall and landing unconscious before the driver exits the car and subdues a dozen men with kicks, punches and throws; the men lie on the floor, unconscious, and we see several of them revive later.
 In a large industrial kitchen two men fight with marital arts and curved knives using punches, kicks, chokes, throws, leg breaks and arm twists as shelving units fall over causing clattering kitchenware and shattering wine bottles to hit the floor; a man receives a slash to the bicep and arm, while the other receives deeper gashes to the back, arms and a deep throat-to-stomach gash with blood drenching him (a close-up of the victor's bloody hand includes a bloody curved knife dropping to the floor with a clatter).
 A kneeling man is pulled to his feet by another man, taken off screen and we hear later that the man is dead (murder is implied). In a karaoke room, a woman kicks her rude date for calling her a crude name and he grabs her by the back of the hair, making her cry, but releases her after an argument.
 A man opens a body bag beside a lake in a field and we see a man inside covered over his face and chest with blood splatter as another man says to load the bag with rocks; two other men swing the body bag and toss it into the lake where it floats to end the scene. We hear that the police commissioner is dead and the camera cuts to a grey-haired man slumped over in his restaurant dinner plate, the top of his head bloody and raw (source is unknown). In a flashback, police officers open the back of a delivery van and find many dead bodies. We see several pictures of men's faces, bloody and bruised and one photo of a man with a brace around the neck. A man sitting on a bathroom floor pours disinfectant onto a gaping bicep slash and into the tub; he trembles and nearly convulses as he grunts loudly in pain. A man in prison displays a semi-circle scar on his right cheek. In a prison cell a prisoner wraps one hand in a length of cloth and punches a chalk outline of a man drawn on the wall dozens of times and we see the paint flaking away from the cement.
 At a meal in a prison a man sits in front of another man and taps the point of a long knife into the table and the guards ignore the action. A criminal says that some men become too ambitious and end up in a shallow ditch, dead. A wife tells her estranged husband that his assassin's job is a disgusting way to support a family and that he is disgusting. In a meeting of two crime families, a man says the families have not drawn blood from each other in decades, until now.
 A man with a facial injury spits blood on the ground, gets up, and seems to vomit with his back to the camera (we see some red blood hit the ground). In a close-up, a man moves his Adam's apple and ejects a clean cell phone SIM card from his mouth. After a gunfight and car chase a man exits his car, stumbles and spits blood on the ground.

LANGUAGE 10 - About 59 F-words and its derivatives (one phrase is mouthed and silent), 11 scatological terms, 8 anatomical terms, 2 mild obscenities, name-calling (crazy, stupid, fool, skunks, hooker, whore, punks, druggies, a nobody, crooks, road sweeper, disgusting), stereotypical references to undercover agents, martial arts heroes, fathers and sons, women, Asian gangs, the Chinese, the Japanese, Indonesians, Whites, prostitutes, pornographers, corrupt cops and politicians, 2 religious exclamations (I Pray to God, Watch Over Me [a prayer before a fight]).

SUBSTANCE USE - A man swallows a tablet after pouring disinfectant on a wound (pain pill is implied). A gloved hand removes a bottle of wine from a bar top and the camera cuts to two men at a table where they are drinking glasses of wine with the bottle on the table, two men drink wine and another is shown with an empty wine glass in a bar, a woman with a glass of wine sits at a café (she does not drink from her glass), many mixed cocktails are shown on tables in a crowded club and a few men and women drink wine and liquor, two men stand near a bar and hold oversized beer bottles (they are not shown drinking), a restaurant wine rack falls to the floor and the bottles shatter, hundreds of bottles of wine are shown in shelving units in a walk-in wine cooler with glass walls (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details), and a man says that White guys drink beer cheaper than the skunks they pay for sex. Six scenes show different men lighting and smoking cigarettes in a prison yard as well as in an office beside and on sidewalks and near a warehouse.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Police corruption, bribes, pornographic film distribution, prostitution, protection money, crime syndicates, gangs, assassins, murder, brutality, families, responsibilities, respect, honor, duty.

MESSAGE - Fight for law and order, even when the odds are against you.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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