Oedipus wreaks

Berandal (The raid 2)

Crit

I mean, seriously, holy fucking shit. No longer is The Raid: Redemption my favorite Malaysian martial arts/cop/action flick. But let me just say right now, before you run out to buy your ticket: if over-the-top, cringeworthy (a word not chosen lightly: this is almost certainly the film whose realistic portrayal of broken bones and assorted other physical indignities most often made me groan) violence and extravagant bloodletting make a film a nonstarter for you notwithstanding the mind-blowing choreography of those fight scenes, well, no.

And if you demand a transparent plot, that may be a problem too. I can tell you it's about a crime family whose son is impatient (and unqualified) for his turn, a rival gangster, a rival Japanese crime family, the Chinese godfather who keeps the peace, mostly corrupt cops, and one clean cop working undercover, under the direction of a cop whose cleanliness is an open question. The filmmakers have helpfully made the clean cop easily distinguishable from anyone he might be fighting by giving him closely cropped hair, but the political alliances and rivalries are fungible and often incomprehensible. But really: are you here for the politics?

I would be remiss if I didn't mention the assassins: the scraggly-bearded machete assassin, who fights off henchmen with one fist and two feet, never sullying his blade with the blood of anyone but his target; the beautiful deaf dual-claw hammers assassin, who--well, let's just say that she would probably still be effective, but she wouldn't be nearly as effective, with ball peen hammers; and her brother (I think) the baseball assassin, who does most of his work directly with an aluminum bat, but who can fungo the occasional lethal line drive as well.

All due respect to the master, but this is not your father's Bruce Lee flick.

Trailers

• Deliver Us from Evil--Supernatural creeper with the legitimizing presence of Eric Bana.
• Sin City: A Dame to Die For--Take 2 on the comic book by Frank Miller, who wrote the screenplay and codirected with Robert Rodríguez. Oh, and Powers Boothe (Cy Tolliver--oh, I mean Senator Roark) returns, and Lady Gaga joins the cast.
• The Quiet Ones--Supernatural creeper without the legitimizing presence of Eric Bana.