For A Few Rupiah More. The Raid 2.

It may be called 'The Raid 2' and it may pick up the story moments after the end of the first one ...but be clear on this...this is not simply The Raid part 2. The confidence of Welsh born director Gareth Evans and actor  Iko Uwais is such that their ambition takes this sequel to a whole new level. This is setting the bar beyond the reach of everyone else in the action genre. The easy route would have been to repeat the formula (Die Hard/Dredd/Assault On Precinct 13 siege movie template) and move it to another location with more numbers to fight against. Instead, this goes for telling an epic gangster tale that just happens to also be the most violent non-stop action story yet filmed. It's the same sophomore quantum leap that you see in For A Few Dollars More, Mad Max II, Desperado, Evil Dead II, Pulp Fiction. It's hard to imagine anything bettering it. It's an instant genre masterpiece.

The wonder of The Raid 2 is that the action comes naturally out of plot. It never feels like the team sat down, wrote some set pieces and then tried to design a story around it. It always feels like your watching a class act, something like 'The Departed/ Internal Affairs'. It exercises your brain as much as it flexes muscle. You have to stay alert. There's feuding families and undercover cops to track. There's treachery, deception and surprises. You have to keep up between the action scenes.

But...it's the action scenes you're gagging for and my God does it deliver. There's an exhilarating prison-yard fight early on that you think takes things as far as they can go but each subsequent explosion of violence ratchets it up a notch.  There's a car chase that throws down the gauntlet for car chases, a subway fight with hammers and knives that throws down the gauntlet for inventiveness, a fight in a cell that does the same for close quarters action, the aforementioned prison-yard scene for spectacle...all without your CGI, wire-work, fast editing, shaky-cam nonsense.

And then there's the kitchen scene. My God, how will anyone top that? Just watching it leaves you breathless, battered and bruised. It's a stunning piece of choreography, film-making and swagger.

Gareth Evans is demonstrably the best action director in the world at this moment.  He's in his early thirties and from Wales. 'The Raid 2' is an immense achievement. If this is his 'For A Few Dollars More, then I can't wait to see his 'The Good, The Bad and The Ugly'.