YMMV / The Raid 2: Berandal

• Awesome Music: The movie is notable for one thing: Both the ending (13 Ghosts II) and credits music (14 Ghosts II) by Trent Reznor.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The scene in the prison visitation room comes off this way. A random man the audience has never seen before shows up, confusing even Rama, says his being there makes Rama “somebody” and acts hostile the entire time like he’s the one in danger. The audience receives no clarification of who the man is, and he never appears in the film again.
  • Similarly, the scene in the club when Prakoso is murdered. Prakoso looks around the bustling club, full of people, catches the eye of a woman who is clearly creeped out by the homeless-looking guy staring at her, then looks at his son's picture for less than a minute, and when he looks up because the music cut off, every single patron of the club has disappeared. Did he somehow pass out? Did the professional killer and highly-skilled martial artist not notice 50+ people leaving the club in under 45 seconds? While it does lead to one of the best fights of the film, it's a jarring scene that is poorly explained.
• Complete Monster: Bejo acts as The Corrupter to the young gangster Uco, son of the top gangster of Jakarta, Bangun, who Uco feels has grown soft. Bejo shows his ambition in the opening scene by having protagonist Rama's brother executed via shotgun to the head for being a threat to him. He manipulates Uco by allowing him to slit the throats of men who had supposedly been behind an attempt on Uco's life—which Bejo was really behind—and convinced Uco to betray and murder Bangun's old friend and top assassin Prakoso, who has been like an uncle to Uco, and frame the rival Japanese gang for it, thereby provoking a Mob War. After Bangun refuses to declare war, Bejo then dispatches his legions of assassins to provoke the Japanese gang by murdering several of their members. When Bangun still refuses and reconciles with the Japanese, Bejo tricks Uco into murdering his own father. Driven by nothing more than greed and ambition, Bejo will stop at nothing to climb the ladder in Jakarta's underworld no matter how many bodies he leaves in his wake.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl for being a Sibling Team with an impressive degree of skill with their respective weapons.
• Even Better Sequel: Berandal not only does Sequel Escalation on the fight scenes, but also has a more developed plot than the first one. Really, considering the mad amount of success of the first film, it's a Moment of Awesome itself for the director and the film team that they not only fulfilled the Tough Act to Follow, but also improved it without lose any piece of its spirit.
• Evil Is Cool: Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl, they proved to be a competent match for The Hero. There is also Prakoso, the Punch-Clock Villain Professional Killer played by the same actor who played Mad Dog in the first film.
• Heartwarming Moments: Rama gets to call on his wife after being separated for two years.
• Ho Yay: Rama hugs Uco before killing him.
• Just Here for Godzilla: The movie's plot can confuse a first time watcher due to the Gambit Pileup that it becomes through its running time, especially if said watcher came to the film believing it would be a simply-plotted butchering fest just like the first film.
• Magnificent Bastard:
  • Rama. See the page for the first film for details.
  • Bunawar is the superior to Rama in the police force and one of the few honest police officials around. Still a ruthless man, Bunawar executes the captive, corrupt Wahyo and gives Rama an ultimatum to infiltrate the Bangun crime family. Sending many moles undercover, Bunawar keeps them unaware of one another after one of them apparently went rogue and caused the deaths of ten good cops. Bunawar uses Rama to find information, intending on getting him close enough to bring down the corrupt police chief Reza and despite his chary attitude towards his moles' safety, Bunawar does not hesitate to put himself at risk to rush to assist Rama at the climax as the Bangun family falls.
• Memetic Badass: Iko Uwais and Yayan Ruhian established themselves as this in the previous film. This film gives us Cecep Arif Rahman (The Assassin) to round out the trio of badasses.
• Narm:
  • The extras' acting prowess are often unconvincingly dull or overly hammy.
  • The sudden big subtitle drop of "TWO YEARS LATER" when Rama is released from prison looks rather cartoonish.
  • Prakoso looking at his son's photo for all of 30 seconds at most, and when the music cuts off, all 50+ people in the club have simply vanished. Did he pass out? Did he just not notice the clamor of that many people leaving? Who knows?
  • Snow in Jakarta. Think about that.
  • The negotiation scene gives a rather funny example, courtesy of the mediator. He threatens to "disband" both Bangun's and Goto's organizations if they don't cease the conflict. This becomes funny if you have any knowledge of the Yakuza, which is an estimated 400 years old and still going strong today. While the guy likely only meant disbanding Goto's own yakuza organization, it is still funny that it sounds like he is threatening the entire yakuza business.
• Older Than They Think: This is basically the film that introduced the karambit knives in modern martial arts cinema, with the duel between Rama and the Assassin being a highlight for them. However, those had already been featured in Tony Jaa's Ong Bak 2 five years earlier; they went unnoticed likely because that film featured many other weapons from Southeast Asia and the little knives weren't among the flashiest.
• One-Scene Wonder: One story arc wonder that doesn't really affect the main story. We are introduced to Prakoso by some fancy fighting, having his life explored, and then he dies.
• Stoic Woobie: Rama has it much worse here than in the first film. He volunteers to become The Mole in the Indonesian underworld and what was supposed to be six month stay in a violent prison turns into two years. This is not helped by the constant beatings and danger he puts himself through by getting into Uco's good graces. The entire time, he misses his wife and young child. His fate is ultimately unknown as the film ends with him injured and standing in front of dozens of yakuza gangsters, stating that he's "done".
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character:
  • Or rather, character's names. For such a trio of interesting characters like the Assassin, Baseball Bat Man and Hammer Girl, they could have come with more original names instead simply pulling out the Exactly What It Says on the Tin naming. Then again, their names are not that important to the narrative, so the film can work perfectly without them.
  • Sadly the movie's quick to kill off the previous films only other surviving characters in order to further emphasize Rama. While Wahyu's death was inevitable and spelt out in the previous film, Bowo and Andi both get bridges dropped on them.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: It's something you might not even notice, but during the car chase scene there's a single unbroken shot where the camera pulls back out of one of the cars, moves down the road, then into one of the pursuing cars and out the other side. This was actually done with practical effects. As WhatCulture showed on their list of 9 Movie Special Effects Nobody Believed, the camera was manually pulled out of the first car by a cameraman on a dolly and passed to another cameraman in the second car, who then passed it behind the driver through the rear window to another cameraman hidden on a platform attached to the other side of the second car. But why couldn't you see the second cameraman in the second car? He was disguised as the passenger seat! To go to so much effort for a shot that, while cool-looking, isn't necessarily something that the average viewer wouldn't even really register, but is still awesome.
• The Woobie: Prakoso chose life as a vagabond so that his family could enjoy all the wealth he had and not get chased by his enemies. And then he got killed by The Assassin before he got any chance to meet his child in person.