Watched: The Raid 2 (2014).
This is certainly a more ambitious undertaking than its predecessor - there are multiple locations, several antagonists, and a plot that delves more into city-wide corruption than one Big Bad - and it both benefits and suffers as a result.
The first film was a masterwork in simplicity - there was something beautiful and stark about the brutal fighting that the film was largely comprised of, and as a result it felt lean and smart in its execution. Here, that focus isn’t quite the same - there are a lot of characters here, and while scenes never last longer than they need to, there do need to be a certain number of scenes just to establish a number of plots. As a result, there’s the odd moment in The Raid 2 where it feels just a little bloated.
All that said, the characterization is on point, and some characters - particularly the girl above, credited simply as “Hammer Girl” - find extraordinarily inventive ways of killing a hell of a lot of people. That’s this series’ hallmark - racking up a huge body count in the most gleefully choreographed ways possible - and it still delivers in spades, making for a film that certainly doesn’t feel like it’s 150 minutes long.