By Brian Viner
Published: 09:19, 11 April 2014 | Updated: 09:19, 11 April 2014
Verdict: Brilliantly done but unspeakably violent
Rating: 
Instead of an 18 certificate, this film should come with a health warning.
It is gruesomely, sometimes grotesquely violent — but then that's the whole point of an Indonesian martial-arts gangster flick written and directed by the non-Indonesian Gareth Evans.
It's full of fight scenes so brilliantly choreographed that they make Bruce Lee look like Bruce Forsyth.
Unspeakably violent: The Raid 2 should come with a health warning
There has to be a plot, of course, but it is there just to mark time between the fight scenes and is unashamedly derivative: The Departed meets The God-father, and then they both meet Enter The Dragon.
In a nutshell, Jakarta cop Rama (Iko Uewais) — whom we first met in The Raid — has to go undercover to root out corrupt policemen.
To do so, he poses as a convict, and in prison — after first dealing with about 50 inmates bent on killing him from within the confines of a lavatory cubicle — he befriends the son of a crime lord.
That admits him to the organisation as a trusted enforcer and from then on it's all crash, bang and especially wallop, interspersed with the odd business meeting. Even the ever inventive Evans can't avoid some of the standard martial arts clichés: propelled by anger but also an apparent death wish, all gangs attack their prey one by one.
But none of that really matters. If this sort of thing is up your street — ie a street with a dead end, where the only option is to turn and fight — then it comes highly recommended.
There is a tumultuous showdown in a restaurant kitchen that is worth the price of admission alone, even if, like me, you would rather see sous chefs actually sous cheffing for a change, rather than making way for chases and fights, as seems to be their lot in the movies.
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