It’s been more than a year since Welsh filmmaker Gareth Evans blew the minds of viewers with his instant martial arts classic The Raid: Redemption (check out Screen Rant’s glowing five star review here), and in the wake of that movie’s global success he’s dedicated himself toward making a sequel, simply titled Berandal, only taking time off to cobble together the best segment for horror omnibus V/H/S/2. Months ago, Evans whet fans’ appetite for mayhem with some early images from The Raid 2 and today, he’s treated us all to an adrenaline-pumping first glimpse of Berandal footage in the freshly-released teaser, seen above.
At just over a minute in length, the clip accomplishes two important goals: upping the stakes of the original movie, and showing off just enough without giving anything away. Forget about plot details or story summations – the basic message here has to do with Berandal‘s scope, ratcheting up the level of impeccably choreographed violence in The Raid: Redemption and introducing a whole new cast of unique, completely terrifying characters (like our recent acquaintance, the ever-fashionable Hammer Girl) ready, willing, and able to dish it out in equal measure.
In other words, Evans wants his audience to know that Berandal will beat the tar out of them, but he’s smart enough to know that too much of a good thing is still just too much. This is a fast teaser, one that captures only heartbeats of carnage with fast-cuts between fight sequences, gangland assassinations, and Iko Uwais – star of the original film, and who just appeared in Keanu Reeves’ excellent Man of Tai Chi – showing a concrete wall who’s boss with his bare hands.
While the trailer is light on anything that resembles narrative, Evans has already touched on the direction Berandal will take; if you haven’t seen The Raid: Redemption yet, you should remedy that immediately, and also beware of spoilers to follow. We know that Berandal picks up where we left our heroes at the end of the The Raid, and that the film will pit Rama (Uwais) against his brother, Andi (Donny Alamsyah), following the latter’s inheritance of his very own criminal empire. Exactly how they wind up butting heads is slightly fuzzier, though it’s known that Rama will go undercover to infiltrate the crime syndicate, so that’s probably our jumping-off point this time around.
The other major known detail here is that Evans intends to make a trilogy out of this story, so whatever happens in Berandal, there’s more to come afterwards. But that’s of little concern for now; just enjoy watching copious amounts of ass-kicking before the film hits US theaters next year.
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The Raid 2: Berandal is currently on-track for a March 2014 release.
