‘The Raid 2′ Director Gareth Evans Spills the Beans about the Film

The Raid: Redemption was considered to be the best action film of the year 2011. It immediately turned out to be a blockbuster film due to its unique storyline and realistic action scenes and Indonesian martial arts. After the huge success of the original film, the director and producers were compelled to make the sequel “The Raid 2: Berandal,” which is directed by Gareth Evans and is set to launch on 28 March this year. The trailers of the film have already aroused gasps, screams and cheers from the audience with its powerful and brutal action scenes.

An event was organized in Los Angeles a couple of days ago for the promotion of the film. Evans, who has edited as well as written the script of both original film and its sequel, jested about the brutal theme of his franchise prior to the screening started, terming “The Raid 2” as a “mild PG-13 drama.” He then brought in lead actor of the film, Iko Uwais, who showed his martial arts skills to the fans, prior to finishing with a fair warning for the fans who are eagerly waiting for the release of film: “Enjoy the violence.”

Uwais, who is well versed with conventional Indonesian martial arts since his childhood, revealed to the media sources that his parents were martial arts trainers, so it is part of his inheritance. While every fight is pre-contrived through a video storyboard, Gareth told that Uwais had lost consciousness for a moment during filming of a last scene.

He also said that the action sequences were cautiously carried out so that the movie would stay balanced and include better action scenes than the original.

“If it’s a three-minute fight scene, we want to put four or five punch lines in there. Punch lines are like those moments in the prison riot when the guy has his head kicked into the tile,” Evans said. “If you just stack (these moments) all up next to each other, it would (become) overkill.”

After planning the action sequences, Evans said he would come up with a video storyboard through crash mats and a video handy cam to work on camera angles and editing aspects — a method he made while filming the first movie.

While the whole Raid team is eager to start work on third sequel, Evans said he requires some time away prior to starting another project and sleep is his main concern at the moment.