Hi, everyone. I'm Gareth Evans, I'm the writer/director of The Raid 2.
I'm gonna share with you anecdotes that went into the making of this film.
And then hopefully, like, along the way, I can kind of explain...
...some of my intentions with this as a sequel to the first film.
And, yeah, fingers crossed, I don't kind of cross over too much...
...on any of the behind-the-scenes materials...
...that we'll have for the film when it comes out.
One of the things I wanted to do with this--
This actual opening shot lasts for about like a minute.
And it's like this huge, long, wide, static shot of this entire location.
And one of the reasons...
...was initially to just completely start off with a new tone...
...with a new sense of pace for the film.
Because the first Raid...
...when it was named Raid: Redemption out in the U.S...
...it started off at this breakneck pace from the get-go.
We kind of jumped right into the action...
...and then immediately, you know, went into that building...
...within a matter of, like, two, five, six minutes.
And so I wanted to kind of start with a shot that kind of told the audience:
"You know, okay, take it easy. Take in the landscape first.
Then this is the new pace. This is the flow we're gonna go for."
Because obviously there's a much longer running time for the film.
There are things about that opening shot I liked in terms of the composition of it...
...because it allowed you to take in that image like a painting...
...like you would on a painting. So you see--
Like those little pops of dust...
...as they cough up behind the sugar canes.
You could see in these two farmers sat down next to a pre-dug grave...
...and they set the tone then for what's about to happen here.
It's kind of all preempting...
...the fate of Andi, Rama's brother in the film.
It's a question of ambition really.
So this is Alex Abbad who plays Bejo.
Me and Alex had worked together before on our first movie, Merantau.
And in that movie, he played, like, a very sort of sleazy pimp character.
And I talked to Alex, like, there's a little bit of background actually...
...about, like, the preexisting script for Berandal.
Because about two-- About four years ago from now actually...
...after we finished Merantau, I wanted to do Berandal.
I'd written the script, which was like a stand-alone project.
And, you know, that ended up becoming retrofitted...
...to become The Raid 2...
...after we did The Raid 1 instead, that was like a plan B project.
And so Alex, I'd contacted four years ago about this role...
...because Bejo existed in this role, as did Uco, played by Arifin Putra.
So Alex and Arifin were both in this weird position...
...where I went off to make The Raid 1...
...and had to tell them, "I'm not gonna work with you yet.
I really wanna work with you...
...on The Raid 2, so there's nothing for you in The Raid 1."
So I had to kind of save them in order to be able to still cast them in this film.
It was-- For me, this scene was always kind of like a bold way to start.
A lot of people kind of had this expectation.
These ideas in their head that we were gonna continue the brother story...
...and we were gonna continue to talk about, like, Rama and Andi.
But in my eyes, like, I was done with that.
I was already kind of-- I already said enough about their relationship...
...within the first film.
So this seemed like a good opportunity...
...to kind of start with a bit of a shock.
And there you go.
And so, yeah, it was like this opportunity to sort of like, you know...
...straight away for the audience...
...like present them with a major role, a major character from the first film...
...and just take him out of the equation immediately from the get-go.
For me, it was the idea of, "Okay, well, I'm gonna start with a slower pace."
I'm gonna tell you, "This is not going to be The Raid 1."
Not gonna be a rehash of the original-- With the original--
With the same sort of like, you know, one-structured building thing.
This is gonna be a totally different thing and all bets are off at this point.
So I talked a little in interviews about the film...
...idea that the start of The Raid 2 would be two hours after The Raid 1 finished.
And this is where we join in. This is that moment, you know...
...after they've escaped that building to have a meeting with Bunawar, and--
With the box of tapes and then with Bowo...
...and with somebody who is clearly not actually Pierre Gruno...
...who played Wahyu from the first film.
For reasons that I'm not gonna go into here...
...we ended up hiring an extra to play the role.
It's a shame. I'd love to have shown his face.
Some things don't work out...
...and this is one of those moments when it didn't work out.
So we did our best to kind of, like, hide that...
...with careful framing, careful body positioning...
...and careful moments when we cut in and out of that shot.
There was more for Bowo, actually. We had more for his character.
We were gonna show him get killed in a scene later in the film...
...but it ended up being cut out as a deleted scene.
This gentleman here, Cok Simbara, who plays Bunawar...
...he's like an incredibly famous actor as well...
...in the Indonesian film and television industry.
And has, like, you know, worked countless times there.
And so he's one of those senior actors...
...that people have a huge amount of admiration for.
And I just love the look of him. I just love the tone of his voice...
...and the way he carries himself, and immediately...
...I kind of saw him straight away fit in this role of Bunawar.
So Toro, my producer in Indonesia, he suggested him.
He kind of presented me with a bunch of photographs...
...of his portfolio throughout the years. And then once I kind of--
I started looking at characters for what this guy should look like...
...how he should dress, how he should look.
And I was looking at a Japanese film called Bayside Shakedown.
And there's a-- There's an actor there...
...and he's kind of wearing this sort of, like, rain jacket with a rain hat.
As soon as we kind of bought something similar, a costume similar to that...
...put it on Cok, I was like:
"Okay, this guy is Bunawar now," and he kind of fit the role perfectly.
And I could do with someone like you to help me dig out some more.
So this is kind of the whole, you know, taking care of the first film.
This is kind of wrapping everything up.
I had a lot of legwork I had to get through in order to get us to a point...
...where we could start The Raid 2.
Because, like, this all still, you know:
"Okay, these characters from the first film that they're left hanging and trailing off...
...we had to get rid of them. We have to make a clean slate.
So that whenever we get ready to start the new progressive story...
...which is the moment he goes into prison...
...and becomes an undercover cop, you know, we're good to go then.
You know, from that point onwards technically...
...you don't have to have seen the first film to get it.
These first 10 minutes were so intricate...
...in terms of being able to balance the right amount of exposition...
...with the right amount of character beats and right amount of intrigue.
Because I wanted to present Bunawar...
...as this guy that maybe you can, maybe you can't trust or not.
There's a certain kind of, you know, manipulation going on as well...
...in terms of how he deals with Rama, in terms of how he talks to him.
And so, yeah, it's-- It was-- It was a--
It was a fair balancing act.
And I think when it came to the postproduction side of things, this was--
This first reel, this first 20 minutes, was the most intensive...
...in terms of the amount of work we put in terms of postproduction.
One of those things. All the way up into the last moment...
...we were always kind of shifting structure around...
...cutting scenes down, making them shorter, trying to streamline the opening...
...so we could get to, you know, that--
What I was saying earlier, the start of The Raid 2 faster and more effectively.
You might have spotted a brief cameo from Joe Taslim, the star of--
One of the stars from The Raid 1...
...who thankfully went off then to kind of, you know, get a role in Fast 6.
A big, huge, proud moment for people in Indonesia, you know.
And he's gone on now, and he's become this big name now in Indonesia.
So when we came knocking on the door for The Raid 2...
...obviously the only thing we could afford was a photograph of him, so, yeah.
So much for friendship, yeah. I'm kidding, of course.
He's a lovely guy and we're gonna work together on the next film.
But, yeah. So it was just-- And for that one, I just--
It was desperate to get Joe back in in some capacity, and so I said to him:
"I can't bring you in in a flashback. I can't bring you in in some kind of like--
I don't know, like, sort of spiritual, sort of, you know, guidance way.
I can't think of any way I can bring you in other than you're a part...
...of a bunch of documents and there's a photograph of you."
And Joe's such a good sport. He's been so sort of appreciative of that...
...of what the first film did for him, he was game.
He just came in and took that photograph and hung out with us on set for a while.
He came and visited the set a lot, actually.
So, yeah, there's been, like, this good relationship between all of us.
And we put a bullet in him to protect your life!
There's no such thing as a clean war in this world.
One of the things I wanted to establish in this opening was play around...
...with, like, a certain amount of editing style.
And one of the things I really wanted to do...
...is to kind of have this style of editing where it was kind of effective of Joe Bo--
John Boorman's films like Point Blank or Sam Peckinpah's The Getaway.
And what I wanted to do is have these things...
...of, like, you know, continuous audio from one source...
...but then shifting locations with the-- On the image...
...to try to, like, you know, create this sort of like unusual atmospheric feel...
...between, like, you know, chronology and information...
...and what we're taking from it, and so--
Yeah, I wanted to play with that when we introduced this funeral scene of the film.
Eagle-eyed people might've noticed there was incense sticks...
...on the table there.
There are gonna be a few question marks. In the first movie when we have Iko...
...we show him praying, and so Iko's character is clearly Muslim.
And the idea of the incense sticks was to present this idea of:
"Okay, you know, Iko's character is Muslim...
...maybe the father is Buddhist, maybe Chinese Buddhist...
...and maybe the mother was the Muslim side of the family."
It wasn't in there to kind of make any kind of social commentary or anything...
...but it was just kind of-- It was more sort of, you know...
...as a throwaway gesture.
So, yeah, peace and harmony for everyone.
I can provide safety for your wife and child.
We can keep them out of reach. But I need you.
Right now....
So we're introducing the big players now.
This is kind of where The Raid 2 really starts.
Now we get to introduce some of our Japanese casts...
...and then also the sort of, like, you know, the next senior actor...
...Tio Pakusadewo, who plays Bangun.
And then earlier, we saw photographs of Kenichi Endo and Ryuhei Matsuda...
...who play Goto and Keiichi, respectively.
And, yeah, this is, like-- This is, like, the real kick-starter.
Now, this is the starting point where we're gonna sort of lay out our plan...
...and our plot for what's about to follow then.
One thing that should be clear, I guess...
...in terms of the names and details I've been throwing up...
...is that idea that, like, this is a much more densely populated script...
...in terms of characters, also in terms of plotting.
And that was a conscious decision.
I mean, I guess to a certain degree, that was more informed...
...by the fact I had a preexisting script.
You know, it wasn't sort of like a response to The Raid 1.
It wasn't like we did The Raid 1 and we were like:
"Where are the flaws? We need more story."
It was more a case of that preexisting script had so much in there that we kept.
We only ended up changing maybe about 20, 30 percent of the script.
So, you know, Bejo was there, you know, Uco was there...
...Bangun was there.
Hammer Girl, Baseball Bat Man, they were already there.
It was just basically police procedural elements...
...that we had to bring in for the new version of the script.
And it was just having to kind of establish that undercover cop element...
...and the investigative side of his character then.
Okay, this guy here, this-- The prison warden is Pak Adi.
And he's actually the--
One of the company chairmen for Merantau Films.
And he was also, like, a sort of well-respected man...
...in terms of, like-- One of the silat organizations, IPSI.
So, yeah, we brought him in.
He was a pop star in the 70s and '80s as well...
...so we kind of brought him in to kind of play a role in this film as the warden.
And, yeah, it was just a pleasure to work with him.
I need more than that.
He's the asshole son of an asshole politician.
So we had a kind of....
There's a scene here that we cut.
This was one of those moments--
One of the really hard scenes for us to decide to cut...
...because we actually showed the moment leading up to him...
...beating up the politician's son.
So here, like, later on, when Rama says, like, you know:
"Where is he," we were gonna cut straight to this nightclub.
And we did this whole sequence, it's about maybe four minutes...
...five minutes long, and it was just one Steadicam shot going through this club...
...following the conversation between Rama...
...and then these, like, two guys, one is an undercover cop...
...that sort of introduced him to these low-level thugs.
And the idea was, is that, like, in that scene was this thing of:
He would be under the pretense of going up...
...to meet with these, like, low-level thugs to start working for them.
But in the process of doing that...
...would lose his shit and then come after the politician's son...
...and then beat him in front of them so that they would bear witness to this--
You know, this crazy, psycho, like, you know, country-boy kid...
...that was wanting to make waves in this sort of underworld.
And ended up being too much of a crazy psychopath for them to hire him.
And so then that would be his, you know, gateway into prison.
But his gateway into prison with a story that would corroborate...
...everything he wanted to set up in terms of not being a policeman...
...but being part of this world.
This is the first fight of the film. This is the first big fight in the toilet.
And these shots here...
...are actually almost directly the same as the things we did...
...for a very early investors' teaser promo...
...we shot in order to try and get money for the film.
It didn't work, but we still kept the same shots.
I don't know what that says about me. My stubbornness I guess as a filmmaker.
So this was, like, a big fight sequence for us to shoot and to start off with.
We had about three-- You can kind of tell if you really look for it.
But we had about two different sort of sizes for the toilet cubicles.
Some were kind of narrow and some were kind of wider then...
...so we could have more space.
And then we also had a certain design in place...
...where we would have the walls on a hinge mechanism.
So that our Art Department could end up sort of swinging the walls left and right...
...opening up the entire thing...
...so we could get our camera in, we could kind of spin around...
...and do 360s inside that toilet cubicle with Iko as he's fighting.
Here's the shot as we come along to it. So we're going in there with him.
They're opening the walls so we can get wide and come up to a profile.
And then here they close it again.
So it was like a combination of, you know, art design, set design...
...and then also good timing.
And at this point, I just feel sorry for every single person...
...that was at the bottom of that pile, because that was not a comfortable--
Not a comfortable shot for any of them to do.
It was kind of important for me to make sure that Iko would lose his first fight.
I didn't wanna kind of have this thing of, like, you know...
...this incredibly invincible hero guy...
...who could beat them up and take out every person that comes in.
We'd established there was significant amount of people behind that door...
...wanting to get to him. In my eyes, it was always that thing of...
...we would play up the idea of there being some strategy...
...in order for him to keep the numbers down low...
...by pulling in two and slamming the door shut...
...or always throwing bodies in the direction...
...of where they would wanna come in so he would block their path.
But it was always the thing of, "Okay, it's just biding their time.
It's never gonna be the solution to it.
Like, he's going to be, like, hurt by them...
...and he's going to be the one that loses that fight eventually."
And this setup here with the wall, this was....
I wanted to create this kind of symmetry between the first film and the sequel...
...where this choreography, these punches...
...are very, very close, if not exactly the same...
...to the sort of exercise that he did with the punch bag in part one.
Difference is in part one, it was all about him...
...mentally preparing himself ready for what he was about to do...
...spiritually ready for what he was about to do.
But as we see in Iko's expression--
I love his expression here. He just nailed it.
It's all about regret, about sadness, and it's all about him realizing...
...just how much he's had to give up now in order to kind of be where he is...
...in order to kind of do what he wants-- What he has to do.
There's a difference...
...because in The Raid 1, it's something he wants to do.
He wants to go in there to take his brother out of that building.
It's all part of his-- You know, his desire. He needs to be able to do that.
But here, it's more of a torment for him...
...because, you know, he has to do it in order to keep his family safe.
And the only part of him that wants to get involved in this capacity...
...is purely that idea of revenge for the people who took out his brother.
But he knows that the entire time that he is in this prison...
...he's not going to be able to do that.
So it was all about, like, that frustration of not being able to fulfill...
...you know, the vengeance inside of him as well.
So now we're about to introduce Arifin Putra, who plays Uco...
...and Benny actually sat next to him, played by Zack Lee.
So Arifin, I'd seen him in the Mo Brothers film Rumah Dara...
...where he played Adam...
...like, this sort of psychopathic guy who was part of, like, a slasher film family.
And I'd always wanted to cast him since then and--
Yeah, similarly to, like, Alex, who played Bejo earlier...
...I'd already spoken to him about the role.
I'd already talked to him about bringing him in on the project.
And so, yeah, he was another one of those actors that kind of had to wait...
...sit and wait for two or three years before I was able to give him the call...
...to say we were gonna go ahead and go into preproduction on it.
But, yeah, I loved working with him.
It was fun to work with him because he was always game for improvisation...
...and very committed to the role.
A lot of younger actors, they're very hungry for it.
They wanna be doing these genre films...
...they wanna have an opportunity to kind of stretch out and not play...
...the pretty boy romance role anymore.
And to actually have someone with a little bit of a bite to him.
And he certainly has that in scenes later on in the film as well.
This?
This location, actually--
I'll talk a little bit about locations here because the....
I love these buildings, these old buildings.
It's in an area called Kota in Jakarta.
And they're all kind of old...
...sort of Dutch-influenced architecture in terms of the design of the buildings.
Now, none of them have been, like, taken care of or looked after properly.
And so-- You know, when you--
When you see the grime on the wall, it's all real, it's all from there.
But there's so much texture to them. So much--
And so many interesting spaces there.
And one of these buildings, basically, would've provided us...
...with about four or five different locations we could use throughout that building.
So you go from one floor to the next, you go next door to another building.
And suddenly, we'd have shot the porn den...
...we'd have shot the prison canteen scene, which we're watching right now.
We've also shot the visitor room here.
We shot different scenes in this one building...
...where it was just like, you know, so many different spaces...
...so many different architectural designs, all within one roof, basically.
This initially was going to lead off...
...into another one of those scenes that we deleted.
We deleted it for pacing issues, where-- We were gonna do, like, a flashback.
And the flashback was gonna be Iko kind of leaving an elevator...
...going back to his apartment only to be met by Andi, his brother.
And we had this whole element of, you know, back-story...
...for, like, a flashback element with his brother.
How he'd given him money and helping him out with his kid...
...because the idea was that the baby was sick...
...and that they needed some kind of support.
And, you know, since Rama had retired from being a police officer at that point...
...in order to kind of keep his head down and keep low...
...he needed money, that's where it came from.
It was the idea of, like, the shades of gray...
...in terms of, like, the moral implications of taking money from his brother...
...who he knows is a criminal.
And there was, like-- There were strong reasons why we cut it.
To be honest, I think the scene wasn't necessary.
It kind of dragged the plot forward.
It kind of, like-- It kind of didn't really kind of move anything forward...
...at a pace that we needed to in this movie.
But also, I just felt it was kind of a cheap shot in a way.
We were trying to do it to play on the emotional thing about the brother dying.
But I kind of liked to kind of keep this sort of more coldhearted...
...distanced view of that-- Of that sort of grieving process for him...
...and not kind of, you know, get too much within that headspace right now.
It would overwhelm what we were trying to do with the scenes...
...which is to establish more about Uco...
...establish more about what his investigation is...
...establish more about what his mission has to become.
And to confuse that with emotional elements...
...about somebody who'd been killed within the first two, three minutes...
...it felt like the wrong place and time and the wrong decision to put that scene in.
So that's why we lost it in the end.
I'm the guy gifting you five years of my graft....
This is Mike Lucock, another Indonesian actor from the film Rumah Dara.
You might notice a pattern here...
...which is basically that I steal cast members from the Mo Brothers.
And they end up stealing cast members from me.
We kind of-- Me and Timo have been, like, good friends for a long time now.
Timo Tjahjanto is, like, one of the directors of Rumah Dara...
...alongside Kimo Stamboel.
And so I've become good friends with them.
Then we watch their movies together, we talk about their projects together.
So we're always kind of spitballing ideas about like:
"Who you wanna cast for this? Who you wanna cast for that?"
Always spoken highly about Mike, so we wanted to bring him in.
Only a small role, but the guy was professional.
He came in and then nailed it immediately.
And he presents, like, this opportunity for us to kind of just give...
...like, a little more hint into that investigative undercover role...
...for Rama, just to kind of, you know, give that sense.
And it kind of helps us in a way on an exposition level...
...give that sense of the amount of time that's gonna pass now...
...and the idea of the amount of damage that Rama did to that politician's son...
...has put him in prison for a lot longer than he was ever supposed to be.
He was supposed to get himself in for a few months...
...and then make a name for himself, you know...
...make himself known to Uco, and then get out.
But, you know, he-- Obviously, as a result of his overwhelming aggression...
...about the situation with his brother and with Bejo...
...yeah, he's created this problem for himself.
So now this is the big prison riot scene.
This was the bane of my life for about eight days.
And it was in this incredible location in Gombong...
...which is about a 12-hour bus ride from Jakarta.
Yeah, as soon as we got there...
...we booked out every single hotel room we could possibly get...
...because we were having to kind of look after not just the cast and the crew...
...but all the extras and all the fighters as well.
A lot of people involved in this shoot.
There's a-- This is, like, a big, heavy load on the production...
...in terms of, like, what we were trying to achieve.
So, yes, this was Gombong, in a place called Benteng Van Der Wijk...
...which was, like, an old Dutch fort.
We obviously modified it a lot.
I mean, it was basically just a structure, just a layout.
It was basically like a pentagon shape of red brick walls.
And then we came in and added, you know, fencing, barbed wires...
...shelters, concrete and tiles...
...and then we also had to add, like, tons and tons of mud...
...that we had to actually import to bring there...
...because we just couldn't get the mud from anywhere local nearby.
And then, of course, my producer, Toro, said that I had a maximum...
...of two to three days when I was allowed to have rain.
Hence, why when we end up cutting...
...to that sort of pivotal moment of them walking, then the slo-mo kicks in...
...that we start to lose the rain, we start to make it dry out a little bit.
And so we just have small droplets of rain then, because we were done.
We had no more rain bars we were allowed to use anymore...
...from that point on.
Yeah, it was-- It was an ambitious shoot.
It was a big, big project for us to do. Filled with lots of logistical errors...
...which I will kind of, like, highlight in a second, once the fight gets started.
One of the things I wanted to do with fight scenes in this film...
...was to establish a sense of narrative purpose within the fight scenes.
So I didn't want it to-- For me, it wasn't enough for the fight scene to be...
...just about the visceral thrills.
So here, we start off...
...we have the paranoia that he's gonna be the one under attack...
...only to realize that they're coming after Uco, they're not coming after him at all.
When he realizes they're after Uco, it's like:
"Okay, well, if I don't protect him, my mission's over."
Yeah, I like that kick, so I had to stop myself for that kick there.
That was one of those examples of, like, a punch line in the fight sequence.
We tried to put them in throughout the fights.
We tried to kind of put like....
If there's something which was three minutes long...
...we tried to have five, six punch line moments.
And those are-- Those movements within a fight sequence...
...where it will elicit a reaction from the audience.
And kicking the guy's face into the tiles was definitely one of those.
I'll jump back in to what I was saying...
...before I completely lose my train of thought.
Yeah, so, you know, it was the idea of-- It's starting off with paranoia...
...finding out that the target...
...is actually the person that he needs to, like, you know, get close to...
...and, you know, that sense of, "If I don't protect him...
...if I don't keep him alive, I'm just gonna rot in jail for no reason.
It's, like, a waste of my entire time and my entire family's life."
And so, yeah, he becomes a bodyguard and has to kind of assume that role.
And in the process of doing that, we get this character change then.
We have this character arc going on...
...where Uco's character is knocked out and unconscious...
...and then he's forced to deal with this....
You know, this thing of seeing that guy that he wanted dead...
...no more than about, like, two scenes ago...
...was now the person responsible for keeping him alive.
And so, you know, it becomes this thing where we, throughout the fight...
...it's not just the visceral stuff, but also the important plot details.
The important character motivation that's gonna keep us going on then...
...you know, way beyond the confines of this prison.
So I'm gonna do something really quick here.
There's a long set up here where we had a long take, a long shot...
...I end up splitting it into a bunch of different takes.
So it starts here. And I'm gonna shout "cut" every time there's an edit.
Cut.
We stitched these shots together to make it feel like it's one flow.
I wanted to make you feel like you're watching one really long shot.
Cut.
Because, like, the actual process of shooting this stuff...
...is really difficult, because it was so much-- Cut.
There's so much chaos going on and there's always mud hitting the lens...
...and there's all these different, you know, elements that could go wrong.
And we also wanted to kind of, you know...
...really show off some of our camera movements.
So-- One second.
Cut.
Hold on for one more second.
Cut. Okay, so we wanted to be able to establish this thing...
...where we were running around with this Fig Rig...
...and coming down low angles, through the mud, through the fighters...
...through everything else, then jumping on that crane...
...to come up for that bird's-eye view shot.
And then to come back down and continue the movement.
And it was this whole one flow of a scene-- Cut.
--where I wanted to be able to stitch every one together.
And we were going from fighter to fighter, prison guards to prisoners...
...to Rama fighting a bunch of guys, and then back to him again.
Cut. And then we come in and rejoin with Benny against Uco.
It's this thing of making this-- You know, this momentum keep going...
...and to make the audience feel like they're gonna get just as tired...
...as the guys who are fighting in this mud.
Speaking of the mud, you can tell now it's starting--
Mud's getting thicker and thicker, because day by day...
...we had to keep adding more and more on top...
...because it was just turning into soup the entire way through.
And it was really difficult, such a hard, hard shoot...
...so physically demanding on everyone involved, not just the cast...
...but also the Camera Department too and the Lighting and everyone else.
We-- Working out in Indonesia, it's a nightmare...
...because, you know, we'd never get, like, sort of, like, a solid...
...sense of light source from the sun.
It keeps clipping in and out all the time.
The clouds are never consistent. You don't get clear skies at all.
And so we had to build these huge, long silk sheets...
...to kind of run over the ceiling of that building from one end to another...
...in order to kind of get a better balance of the color.
This is one of my favorite things that Iko's done in the movie...
...because this is so, so difficult.
You can watch him. He's barely able to keep his feet still inside the mud...
...take on all these different guys that are coming at him at a breakneck pace.
So, yeah, we did about maybe....
We ended up doing about seven or eight takes on that one...
...which I was expecting a lot more.
But I was so proud to kind of get that take. That was hard.
Like, on a technical level, it's hard anyway.
When we designed this whole fight scene...
...we designed it in, like, you know, a sports hall with crash mats.
We hadn't figured in-- We hadn't taken into account yet...
...what it was gonna be like once we'd filled the thing with mud.
And I don't think really any of us expected it to be this muddy.
We thought there would be at least some element of grass...
...and some kind of, like, concrete in there to sort of help with the footing, but, no.
That soup that his head is submerged into...
...that's what we were dealing with every day of the eight-day shoot on this one.
So now we're jumping forward in time.
And I wanted to kind of have this exit the prison.
Actually this location was actually-- It was a café.
It was a café in the middle of the old town, Kota. Kota again.
Those walls were already like that. They looked like this.
We didn't have to do anything...
...except add one or two little prison bars on the door, and that was it.
So it was perfect for us.
This is a composite. This shot was a composite.
We couldn't get this high with our Jimmy Jib, with our crane and stuff...
...so we just shot, like, a little section of the wall...
...a little section of Arifin crossing over the floor...
...and just had Andy...
...our legendary CG guy, who has worked with me on everything I've done...
...expand the shot out, expand this sort of-- The landscape...
...to make it feel like it was this one big, huge bird's-eye view.
You can do that yourself.
And so we're establishing now the first of many moments...
...where we start to show the cracks in the relationship...
...between Rama and, you know, Bunawar...
...who's kind of in charge of his investigation...
...with the idea of Rama removing the wire from his clothing.
Because he knows he's gonna exit that prison...
...and then be taken under the wing of Uco...
...and, you know, become part of Bangun's family.
And here's Bangun, played by Tio Pakusadewo.
And so there was just the idea of the first day wearing a wire...
...is the worst thing that Bunawar could have done.
So he was kind of planting those seeds of, like, doubt and mistrust in them.
Now we're getting into the whole gangster side of things.
We're sort of--
We're into the families now, the two rival groups.
We get the Japanese side with Kenichi Endo as the lead...
...and then obviously, Tio Pakusadewo is Bangun, who I mentioned earlier.
Tio had to learn Japanese for this role.
So these lines of dialogue back and forth...
...we kept it all in Japanese to make it easier for Kenichi Endo...
...so he didn't have to learn Indonesian, and fair play to Tio...
...and also to Oka Antara who plays Eka...
...there in the background, looking all dapper in his suit.
They both had to kind of learn their Japanese dialogue, and....
You know, we had a translator on standby.
We had my wife then, Maya...
...who was kind of overseeing all of the Japanese dialogue...
...to make sure they are pronouncing correctly.
Japanese casts themselves were cool with it as well.
They came onboard and helped us out as well...
...suggested some translation changes here and there.
And that's kind of the case really...
...throughout the whole process of writing the script.
I write everything in English first and foremost.
So the whole script exists in English first...
...and then it gets translated later on into Indonesian...
...and then translated further again into Japanese...
...for these-- For these characters.
And so, you know, when you're doing translations like that, a lot can get--
A lot can get lost in translation.
And so it's kind of important to be able to get these versions of the script...
...and workshop them with the cast, and then....
You know, the benefit I've had...
...is that a lot of my cast, they speak in fluent English too...
...so they can read both versions.
They can read the English and the Indonesian.
Read the English and read the Japanese...
...and then be able to come to me and say:
"You know, I get what you were trying to say in English...
...but something's gone missing along the way."
And then we'll work together and we'll find the correct term to use, then.
This is all something we do in preproduction. This is all--
When we're doing our reading sessions.
So we went away. We went off to this, like, place in the middle of Puncak.
It's sort of like this-- Sort of like a villa...
...and we stayed there for a few days and read through the entire script...
...and then started making notes of anything that needed to be changed.
Because a lot of times, direct English to Indonesian translation can sound stiff.
It can feel forced.
And so we wanted to make sure that, like, it fit the tone of the film...
...it fit the tones of the characters...
...and, you know, wasn't sort of too straightforward and direct translation.
--is that you suffer the indignity of an old man seeing your cock--
This was....
This scene here was probably the only--
The one and only time that Iko has ever asked me...
...if I really, really, really wanted to shoot this kind of a scene.
He seems fine when it comes to people being punched or thrown...
...or kicked or stabbed or shot at...
...or, you know, sandwiched between cars. All of that's fine.
But the moment we wanna get him to take any of his clothing off...
...man, he went nervous and he was really, really quiet for a while...
...when it was leading up to the shoot to this one.
And so I had to kind of assure him that, you know:
"We're not gonna show anything.
We're gonna be very careful with our framing."
When he actually-- He's not actually doing anything.
He just mimes the movement and we just zoom in to kind of hide everything.
But, yeah, like, you've never--
I've never ever seen him this nervous the entire time I've known him.
So, yeah, fair play to him.
He did-- He did his job and I think the crew....
They probably did make fun of him quite a lot during the shoot.
But, yeah, he was a trouper and he pulled through on it.
If you're watching this for, like, the second time....
I'm guessing you should be, you shouldn't listen to my commentary...
...before you've seen it first time.
You already know what the character of Eka, played by Oka Antara--
You already know that there's another side to him...
...where, you know, he's an undercover cop that went--
That was presumed to have gone rogue and the idea is that--
You know, that he's been left to sort of hang...
...and he has had no choice...
...but to just, you know, survive within this family.
And the only way that he can survive is to become a gangster...
...is to become one of those thugs.
And he's just been left to hang by his superior, which is Bunawar...
...by all intents and purposes.
And so I wanted to play on this idea a little bit of--
There's only a few moments...
...but I wanted to play on the idea that there are moments...
...where he hints either through dialogue or through gestures...
...that maybe he knows that Rama is an undercover cop.
So there's the idea that, you know, there's a possibility...
...there was more than one wire in Rama's clothing, that's why Rama is terrified...
...because he knows that there would be more than just the one connection.
And that, you know, when Oka actually says that it's clear...
...that it's all fine, who knows, maybe he did find something.
He's protecting him because he knows that--
You know, he knows the position that Rama is in.
And later on, that kicks in again.
There's a scene coming up soon when Rama is introduced...
...to his apartment block...
...and Eka says to him directly--
He says, you know, "I feel like we come from the same place, you and I.
I hope that's not where our similarities end."
And that was like a sort of premonition, in a way...
...for the fact that they both share...
...that hidden identity as undercover cop, then.
-just call and they'll take care of it.
Thanks.
We did a lot of studio work for building locations, like--
So previously, we had Bangun's office, and now we have Rama's apartment.
And all of these were built inside a studio set.
And whenever possible, we would try to build...
...three or four sets within one studio space...
...that we could just jump around from room to room...
...and be able to maximize our shooting time.
But, yeah, the--
Our Art Department, led by Moty and his team, they did a good job...
...on trying to kind of, like, you know, create sort of, you know....
Like a sort of a minimalist, but, you know, nice-looking design...
...with a minimal amount of money that we could give them...
...in order to kind of execute the ideas that I had in mind.
So I'm gonna talk a little bit about the music now.
So on the first Raid, we had an original score from Indonesia...
...which was done by Fajar Yuskemal and Aria Prayogi.
And then later on--
I mean, this was kind of decided before we'd even completed the film.
Like, Sony Pictures Classics, Sony Worldwide...
...wanted to kind of replace the audio, replace the score...
...with something that they could easily market and sell to the masses.
That became an alternative score...
...done by Joe Trapanese and Mike Shinoda from Linkin Park.
And so that was like a-- It was a great opportunity...
...for me to be able to have my film scored twice...
...and to be able to hear where the similarities would be...
...and then also, you know, where the differences would occur...
...in terms of, like, what tone they thought I was going for scene by scene.
But at the same time, it was difficult.
It was a real hard thing...
...to be able to discuss openly with my composers from Indonesia...
...because they put in all this work and they were so proud of their work...
...and so was I.
Like, I was very happy with the work they did.
Then for it to kind of slip by the wayside, not be kind of have given a platform...
...for other people to hear their work, it was hard for them.
And I totally understand where they came from.
I know they weren't happy that they lost out on that opportunity...
...for their work to be played in different territories.
But for this one, I wanted to kind of take every step possible...
...to prevent that from being the case.
And one of the ways that I could do that...
...was by making sure...
...that I combined Joe Trapanese and Aria Prayogi...
...and then Fajar Yuskemal together...
...to make this composition as a sort of a--
As a mix of Western and then Eastern sort of styles.
And so, you know, they're--
All three of them are classically trained musicians.
And they all have very similar tastes and that--
But what Fajar and Ogi can bring to the table...
...was, like, a deeper understanding of those traditional Indonesian music--
Musical elements, those instruments.
And then what Joe could bring to it, obviously was that kind of, you know....
Those really hard sort of, like, electronic beats to it.
But then also what I love about-- Especially this scene now.
And it's kind of, like, perfect timing for us to discuss this...
...is that amongst all of this sort of aggressive...
...hard, rough, edgy sort of, like, you know, electronic sounds...
...that we put in to all the fight sequences....
Like, here was that key moment...
...when the first two days of them working together...
...when we flew them out to L.A., we gave them this scene.
I wanted them to start here because I felt that this scene, this one moment...
...where we have, like, a quiet...
...sort of contemplative sequence between Rama and his wife...
...after not speaking to her, not being able to communicate to her for three years.
We needed something there that would work on an emotional element...
...and really sort of set the tone for the film...
...and really kind of back up what I was trying to do...
...on a visual and a performance level.
And so, yeah, they collaborated together...
...and brought so much heart and soul.
Like, this scene is pretty much carried so heavily by the score.
It's one of my favorite pieces of music in the entire film...
...so much so that we ended up reusing it...
...for the-- Sort of the tail end of the end credits.
I gotta say, I mean, in addition to the fact that the music is so great here...
...one of the other things I'm happy with is Iko's performance.
And, you know, it often gets overlooked...
...because everyone kind of focuses on the fact that, yeah, he can beat the shit...
...out of people, left, right and center, but when it comes...
...to sort of the physical performance and the actual dramatic performance...
...I think he's just brilliant.
I think he's so good here.
And it's so much in his eyes there, so much in these little tiny gestures.
You know, little gl-- Little sort of, like, curl of a smile and stuff.
It's just-- It all came from this ability that he has now.
Because on the previous two movies...
...like, he was still kind of lacking in world experience.
He hadn't really done much really.
He'd kind of, you know, just lived his life in a very sort of young way...
...a very sort of immature way, and then....
You know, suddenly, we go into this one and he's married...
...he's expecting his first child.
And so then I was able to, you know....
Not exploit, but I was able to get inside his head more...
...then to call upon those fears you have when you're an expectant father.
About, you know-- Of not being able to be there for a child...
...not being able to be around to hear those first words...
...to be able to, like, see those first steps.
And so I was able to kind of push and prod him...
...and get a stronger emotional performance out of him.
Okay, so the porn den. The legendary porn den.
This is one of those locations I told you about...
...when we were shooting in the prison canteen...
...and then also the warden's office. This was, like, the ground floor of that.
And just for trivia...
...because we're dealing with an Indonesian censors board...
...we had to be careful what we show and what we don't show on screen.
And so when it came to those TV monitors...
...all of the sort of movements of flesh, when you really look at them in detail...
...it's one of my ADs. And all he's doing is just bumping his elbows together.
So it's just that. There's no actual nudity on screen.
We wouldn't be able to get away with it.
I didn't wanna have to go through and change anything in post unnecessarily.
So, yeah, it's elbow time.
Okay, so this actor, Epy Kusnandar...
...is one of my all-time favorite guys I've worked with.
We worked with him--
Me and Timo, sorry, worked with him on Safe Haven, our short film.
And Timo has worked with him ever since and so have I now.
He's just such a great character actor and a good sport too.
Because all of those clumps of hair missing from his head...
...yeah, I was telling the hairdresser, "Just go for it...
...and just don't do anything according to what you would normally do."
I'm gonna probably lose my thought, so I have to talk about this.
This is my one and only time I've ever written an Indonesian joke.
And it's a shame because this is one of those one and only times...
...where this would absolutely get cut from an Indonesian market.
But the whole thing of joki and why it works so well in Indonesia...
...when she says, "Where do you come from?"
"Joki" in Indonesia is when you have like a carpool lane in the U.S...
...or you have these roads...
...that you have to have more than one passenger in your car.
And in Indonesia, when you're driving along those areas...
...before you get to those roads, there's always people at the side...
...and they'll put their fingers up.
And if you stop over, you can pick one up and then give them like a dollar or $2...
...and they'll ride the road with you.
And then they get off at the end of the road, and then that's done.
But the idea is that the poor kid behind that curtain...
...who is being treated so terribly by her is just one of those guys from the joki...
...when you kind of put the two images together.
For an Indonesian audience, at least, it kind of works really well as a gag.
But, unfortunately, they won't get to see that.
So let's step away from the dildos and go back to Epy's hair.
Basically, my whole remit on that one, I told the makeup guy and the--
The hairdresser, sorry, for the role and that, I said:
"It's the equivalent of this porn baron...
...taking a photograph of some model that he saw in a catalog."
Instead of taking that photograph to a salon to replicate it...
...he took it to a junkie that he knows two streets down that has a pair of scissors.
And so that was like the design. It was like, "Give me that haircut.
Give him that look."
And so, yeah, we really just destroyed and ruined him.
So now we're getting into our thing of building up the tension...
...of the fight sequence before it all kicks off and explodes.
This is something I like to do.
I like to have calm-before-the-storm moments.
And, basically, what I wanted to do is to kind of play around with, like, reflections.
And we designed this thing where-- And it took ages for us to set this up...
...because it was a combination of positioning of the water on the floor...
...then also, the strength of the light on the gun...
...and then, you know, darkening the floor surface where the water was...
...in order for us to be able to just get this shot.
So this sequence took like-- It took us like a day...
...to just get all of the build-up elements done...
...before we were able to kind of move forward, then back to the normal...
...you know, head slamming, kicking and pushing and shooting.
So this was Oka's first introduction to do an action scene.
And this stunt right here, with the pull down to the guy on the table...
...that went terribly, terribly wrong on the first guy that did it.
Because the guy who first did it misjudged his fall.
Fell down way too early...
...and then almost cracked his ribcage open against the edge of the table.
It was a bit of a rough patch for Oka. I think he was kind of--
He was definitely, like, a little bit emotional about it.
But I had to take him inside and say, "This is going to happen.
That kind of stuff will happen to everyone on the shoot in some capacity or another.
You know, don't beat yourself up about it. Just-- Like, this is-- Carry on.
Let's do the stunt. Gonna have to do it because we're not gonna stop.
You're gonna have to keep going."
And...there you go.
Okay, so this stunt, jumping forward through the window...
...I hate doing the stuff with glass.
It's my least favorite whenever it comes to these stunts...
...because it doesn't matter we're using tempered glass.
Yeah, people get little cuts from them. It's just the way the glass is.
And so-- Especially for a jump like that.
We had Yandi, our stunt guy, stunt doubling for Epy to do the jump.
And you can see, if you go through it frame by frame...
...literally about three frames before he makes impact with the glass...
...we had like an-- Like a squib charge go off...
...to kind of make it splintered already.
And so, yeah, the timing of the squib guys was just amazing.
It was just perfect for that.
Epy himself is like-- You know, he's a very kind of physical actor.
Like, when we did Safe Haven, he wanted to be the guy...
...who would do the jumps and the grabs and the stabs and everything else.
But on this one...
...there are certain moments where we just had to bring in a fight double.
But he trained as much as anyone else did.
He came in and sort of, like, learned the choreography with Iko.
And, yeah, for his moments when it is him, man, he went full-on.
So I was proud of him and proud of his performance here.
And he's a great comedic actor. He's got great timing as well.
And he's got this great look, so--
Yeah, absolute joy to work with him again.
He did good.
Hounded him down quickly and cleanly.
You'd swear he's been doing it all his life.
Didn't take a wrong step.
Okay.
So, what I wanted to do is kind of like-- With this scene...
...was start to sow the seeds of Uco's ambitions...
...and to present him as somebody who, you know, wants more in life.
Now, Uco as a character...
...it's difficult for me to describe because for me, for Uco...
...I have, like, a certain feeling of, like, sympathy for him...
...in certain respects.
Like, he does have this vulnerable side of him...
...kind of created from the distance between him and his father.
And so there is like a sympathy towards him as well.
But at the same time...
...like, I also kind of hate him too, which is kind of contradictory, I guess.
But the thing that Uco represents is this--
This terrible elitist side of some of the Indonesian upper class.
Like, these sort of spoiled rich kids that you see just sort of bitching endlessly...
...and moaning about, like, the country and the way it's run and the way it is...
...and, you know, how much better other countries are than it.
And then they just don't do anything about it.
They just continue to bitch and moan. And they have the resources.
They have the finance, the connections.
They have so much at their disposal they could use...
...in order to help out the country, but they don't.
They choose to just, you know, do what this guy does...
...which is, you know, get drunk and then, you know, abuse his power...
...abuse his position and his situation.
So to a certain degree, I guess, yeah, it's--
It's a love-hate relationship that I felt with Uco when I was writing him.
Would you like a drink?
No, I'm fine, thanks.
So this was a moment then-- Because previously we had this scene...
...where this was carrying on-- About Uco's character.
But previously we had the scene with Uco with his father...
...where we kind of got to instill some sympathy in him.
We got to feel this moment where he was reaching out...
...and trying to be ambitious, trying to show his father...
...what he wanted to achieve, what he wanted to be...
...and to say, like, "I'm ready for this," only to be told "no" by his father...
...only to be completely sort of emasculated by him.
And so then what I wanted to do is just to give this audience a moment...
...where they have this window into his character, feel something for him...
...to completely, like, destroy that sympathy within the next scene.
Because he already is, you know, instigating this situation.
He's pushing for this moment. He wants to vent on someone.
And the people he's picking...
...are people that, you know, can't defend themselves against him...
...that are powerless against him.
And so the-- You know, this--
We-- I know when we did, like, our first sort of like edit of this and we'd--
And I presented this scene as part of sort of the rough cut of the film...
...there were a lot of question marks over it.
Because I know, like, some of the guys, like, at XYZ were kind of wondering:
"Is it too much? Is it too strong?
Do we need it? Do we need to see this side of him and--" You know?
I'll be honest. I wanted to push it ahead, I wanted to push it through...
...because I just felt like it was so important to have something in there...
...which presented Uco as, you know, our potential bad guy.
Because he skirts this line of being someone we can sympathize with...
...and then somebody who's just absolutely morally reprehensible.
And so this was like that-- Sort of like that big showcase moment of--
Of that element of him, that dark side of him...
...that aggression in him, the demon in him, really.
Don't you fucking dare!
And Patty here is great. She was so great in this performance.
We wanted to have this moment where it's like she's been in this situation before.
And the-- Maybe the last time she hesitated...
...and didn't press the button.
And we wanted to kind of have this, like, little section for her...
...and a subpart of her character...
...where she's not gonna make that mistake again.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I can't. No, no." Bullshit!
But not tonight!
So this dialogue was improvised. This is something that we-- That I came to Uco--
I came to Arifin and said, "I've written this dialogue for you...
...and this is gonna be that moment where we start introducing you...
...complaining about sort of, like, you know, the country on a national level...
...and to sort of start sewing those seeds of, like, false patriotism."
Is everything okay here, sir?
No, we're all good.
I loved shooting in this place. This is my favorite day of the shoot...
...because all the cast were so given to the scene...
...and they all kind of, like, nailed their performances.
And on top of that, we got this great sort of, like, looking production design...
...for the actual set itself.
This is a real karaoke place in Bandung that we shot in.
And if you look closely, you can see, like, outside of the main door...
...all of the names of the karaoke booths that are written on the doors.
So they have-- Not on this because we replaced it.
But they all have names of countries...
...and they're all themed according to different countries.
Part of the reason why Arifin mentions about meeting up with Uzbeki girls...
...is because every time we would kind of walk down these corridors...
...you'd see these rooms themed to do with different countries.
So there was-- There was Russia, Uzbekistan.
And that just-- It became one of those things...
...that I'd hear the crew guys saying.
And then that became like an element of the dialogue in the film then.
I'm fine, I don't care what some hooker says.
It's that she had the fucking nerve--
So here we're having this first opportunity for Rama and Uco to have like a--
Have a quiet moment where they're open and sharing with each other.
We had a deleted scene that, you know, was way back...
...in the prison riot. After the prison riot.
Were gonna have a scene of them being dragged into two confinement cells...
...and sat next to each other and, you know, discussing the future...
...and discussing what they're going to do now that they would come under attack...
...in the prison. And that was designed...
...to sort of establish their relationship together.
But then we cut it for numerous reasons.
One of the main ones being pacing.
And I'm kind of glad we did because it works so much better...
...with this being that first moment, the time when he's vulnerable...
...and, you know, still within a certain amount of anger and rage.
That it was a good opportunity for us to do that.
Okay, so I gotta explain that...
...because it'll come back later on.
The cold breath in the air.
This is something that ties in with the snow later on...
...in the film, and, you know, we'll see it later on.
But I'll kind of give an explanation for it.
So anytime that Bejo is involved in this film...
...I wanted it to feel like the temperature of the film drops.
So the very first time we see him with Donny, with Andi's char--
Sorry. Donny's character, Andi...
...Andi is shivering.
Like, they're all wearing winter coats. And that's very, like, uncommon...
...in terms of Indonesia.
And then, you know, when Bejo phones up with Uco...
...his breath comes out. We see it hanging in the air.
And so then there's this link then between the two.
Later on, we'll see the guys being pulled out of a freezer.
There's a sacrifice, and then they're shivering as well.
And then the final climax of it is obviously with Prakoso...
...is the idea that, you know, it's reached that tipping point now...
...where there's snow everywhere and that it fills the entire landscape.
To a certain degree...
...that's a complete bullshit pretentious little excuse for me...
...just being able to have snow in the set.
And we can't have snow anywhere near Indonesia.
But it's a pretentious bullshit answer that actually does kind of hold...
...some form of logic to it too.
So I'm sticking with it...
...for anyone that just cannot get over the fact that there's snow in Indonesia.
But for anyone that's okay with snow in Indonesia...
...thank you for being cool about it.
So I should probably talk about Yayan Ruhian...
...who's playing Prakoso here.
Now, a lot of people recognize him as Mad Dog from the first movie...
...and so we went through a lot of effort to make him feel a lot different...
...from that previous movie. Obviously, we, alongside my makeup chief...
...Kumalasari Tanara, designed a whole new look for him...
...where we kind of, like, aged his skin and gave him a beard.
And then, you know, his hair, we grew it out and we kind of dyed it gray.
And, you know, just comple-- A large part of that transformation...
...come from Yayan in terms of performance.
It's such a, like, 180 in comparison to what he did as Mad Dog.
Here it's like-- It's more sort of introverted. It's more sort of like that lonely guy...
...as opposed to Mad Dog, who is kind of just this badass...
...who had all these witty quips every now and then.
So, you know, now he's just-- It's just pure work ethic.
What I wanted to do with this was-- This is one of the first designs for the film...
...back about three or four years ago, was this idea of let's do a fight scene...
...where we have a hit man with a machete.
But he won't use it on any of the bodyguards.
So he ends up having to fight against all these guys one-handed...
...while he saves that machete for use only on the person that's the target.
And so, yeah, it was fun. We kind of went through everything.
We kind of, like, got together in the office...
...and started to think of all these things we could do...
...all these pieces of choreography design...
...locks like that one and lock and the break of the wrist using the chin.
These fascinating little movements that we could put into the scene here...
...and show something we haven't done, show an element we haven't explored.
Part of me doesn't like that shot. I like it in theory.
I like the idea of doing that bird's-eye view with the pan...
...but we had to do it on-- Like, on a-- I think it was on a Jimmy Jib.
And so we had, like, sort of a motorized control.
And you can really feel that motorized element to it.
It doesn't stop clean.
This location....
Okay, so this is right next to the airport in Jakarta.
And I had seen this over and over again.
And similarly to-- As I was talking earlier about there were certain cast members...
...that I kind of approached about this...
...when it was in its previous incarnation about four years ago.
There are also some locations that I had seen, you know, about four years ago...
...that I really wanted to use in the film that I kind of hung onto.
This is one of them.
And, literally, about-- Maybe about a month...
...before we were about to shoot here, there was, like, extreme floods.
And so the government had dug up all of the grass on here...
...and then dumped the mud in order to sort of, you know...
...help stem the tide on the water as it was rising.
And so that's why it's all so kind of like, you know, dead grass...
...and dead leaves around the area, is because it was completely destroyed.
So it was this beautiful stretch of green that I had seen for four years...
...and then, all of a sudden, this one time the waters rose...
...that was the time about-- Just before we were about to shoot there...
...that completely changed the look of the landscape for us.
He won't, sir.
The time I've known him, he speaks nothing but highly of you.
We have these little moments here where we kind of hint at back-story in Bangun.
He says about, you know:
"I don't want my son to, like, lose--
I don't want my son to learn from the loss the same way I did."
And so it's kind of like showing this element of, like, regret.
And we've always kind of had Bangun wearing a wedding ring...
...but we never see his wife. It was this idea...
...that, like, part of his back-story would be that she was taken from him...
...when he was the one that was supposed to be taken from the earth.
And so I wanted to kind of have these little--
Subtle little sort of lines of dialogue that just hinted at a back-story...
...that hinted at a sort of life of regret.
Because, you know, I just-- I wanted to have that--
That weight over the-- His worry for his son.
And to kind of have this moment where, like, he's showing...
...that he genuinely cares about him, genuinely wants his son to be okay.
But he can only do that in front of other people, never in front of Uco himself.
The main difference between you and I can be defined by one word.
Legacy.
So this location--
Okay, so this location was an absolute nightmare to find...
...but I'm so glad we found this one because the layout, structure...
...the look of it, the lights, the sort of--
The staggered ceiling, that was all there, that was all for real.
What wasn't there was that stage and the bar in the background.
That we had to add ourselves.
And actually, interestingly, the stairs leading up to the bar...
...those are CGI stairs...
...because we didn't have time to build the entire set...
...and then, also, to have it like, you know, looking as polished as we wanted.
So we did a lot of little cleanups every now and then with CG...
...in order to kind of make the overall feel of this a lot more high-class...
...than it actually looked.
This hotel is actually in Bandung, a place called Hotel Horison.
We'd been discussing with a few other places about using their ballrooms.
And after a few months of trying, we were stuck. We had nothing left.
And then, suddenly, this place was presented to me...
...during the middle of the shoot. So we would literally go off...
...and then take a look at this other hotel after we'd wrapped on a shoot.
And so, yeah, it was immediately something that I saw...
...and, you know, wanted to use and felt that it had, like, a good character...
...in terms of being able to be converted into...
...being something that would be Bejo's restaurant.
But no, that's not me.
Not today at least.
So this is what I was talking about earlier, that idea of every time Bejo is involved...
...we start dropping the temperature in the film.
And so, you know, the guys who are sort of inside that freezer...
...like, they're being brought now to be the sacrifice for Uco.
Because they obviously were instrumental...
...in the attack on his life when he was in prison.
And, yeah, assuming you guys have seen this now already...
...and have to-- But like--
These guys are part of Bejo's clan. And that was always the intention...
...is to kind of have this moment whereby we show sort of their similar tattoos.
They all have the same tattoo on their wrists.
And, basically, when we reveal that Bejo shares that tattoo...
...it makes it all the more creepier for me then, that idea that these guys were--
Like because there's this tribal element in play...
...when it comes to this gang, where they will literally give their lives...
...in order for their boss to establish himself, for him to become--
Like, a rise in power in terms of their organization.
And so that's something we play on later on...
...when there's like this shared look between Bejo and Zack...
...where he literally gives himself in to Uco...
...who's about to cut his throat.
So, yeah, that was like a big sort of important factor...
...of the relationship between them.
I give you the opportunity...
...to claim revenge.
One of the things I wanted to do with this scene--
Because I'm not--
Okay, so contrary to popular belief...
...I'm not really a huge fan of, like, extreme, extreme violence in a movie.
Granted we have a number of big punch line moments...
...but I've always had this thing whereby the way my dad raised me...
...the movies my dad showed me and the movies that my dad responded to...
...it was a thing of you can have visceral moments of violence in your film...
...you can have elements in there which are kind of harsh and aggressive...
...but never let it be something...
...where you focus on the pain, where you focus on the torture.
So, like, I kind of went out of my way in order to kind of--
When it came to writing this scene, to try to kind of soften the blow a little bit...
...on, you know, all of his concerns and was to kind of be able to say to him:
"Look, trust me. I know how I'm gonna shoot this.
I'm gonna shoot this where you're not gonna feel it...
...as much as you usually would."
But it's very difficult to kind of, you know, do a scene like this...
...where, you know, in the-- For a large part of it...
...it's all about this sort of like incredibly violent act...
...but being ignored by the two of them. They continue to talk business.
They don't-- They don't sort of skip a beat even.
And so, yeah, it was-- There were a few moments--
There's two moments coming up later on...
...where he sort of, like, stops halfway through on a guy's throat.
And my approach is always like, "These are moments in that scene...
...which could tip it over the edge into that thing of the suffering and the pain.
But as long as I keep my camera wide enough...
...as long as I stay far away from him...
...then, you know, it won't be seen as exploitative as it would otherwise."
And it's kind of important for me because, like, I totally respect, like, my dad.
He's been a huge sort of guiding force in terms of, like, everything I've done.
There's a message for him at the end, and it's true.
I mean, he's read every single draft of every script I've ever written...
...and he's also watched every cut of every film I've made...
...and has given me notes and has kind of, like, you know, skirted that line...
...of being the supportive dad, but also being the critic of it...
...when something feels wrong, something feels too much.
And you know what? For me it's been a thing of this:
If he doesn't feel offended by something, then I'm okay.
And, you know, he was fine with this. Like, he felt like the cutaway points...
...were at the right point, the right time. And it could have so easily have been...
...you know, a different focus and a more dangerous approach to the scene.
Everyone has their limit.
One of the things I wanted to do is establish this thing in this scene.
It's important, says a lot about this character.
It's that idea of, with all the other guys that he kills, he does it indiscriminately.
He does it casually and continues to talk business...
...throughout the entire process.
When it comes to Benny, Benny is kind of like the representation of it...
...being like the prize.
He's like-- He's the one that he really wants to enjoy himself with.
And, you know, this idea of grabbing him and then shushing him...
...and getting him to calm down, it's just all about that emasculation.
It's all about the idea of making him feel small and pathetic...
...and realizing that, you know, it doesn't matter how hard he tries...
...there's only one outcome from this.
So there's your little signifier that we use later on in the film...
...about the tattoo and the idea of it linking them together.
And that's that look I talked about earlier as well, that resignation of defeat.
And this is, you know, the ultimate sacrifice for his boss.
Because, technically, that's what's happening now.
We're seeing it for the first time in the movie...
...through a different pair of eyes.
But, yeah, all those things are inside that performance.
And we had to kind of, like, find a way to hint at those without being too obvious.
So Bejo's reaction, the look that Bejo gave him back...
...we had to be so careful with that not to hint at anything too much.
But there's a little feeling there and it's enough to keep us going.
Now, you know, we're in a point now where I wanted to kind of come back...
...to that idea of reinforcing Rama's goal with his-- In his mission.
Because, you know, he's--
At the moment we've got this position where he doesn't know...
...that Uco is meeting with Bejo at all. All he's hearing is voices.
He doesn't know who owns this place and who he's talking to...
...because it's all just audible.
And so, you know, this is a moment where we got to show a little bit...
...of a proactive side of Rama where he's actually investigating properly.
And, you know, he's playing, you know, good cop here.
But then the idea is just how easily he gets swayed emotionally...
...when he realizes that, stood like literally like a hundred yards away from him...
...is the person that killed his brother, is the person that destroyed his family...
...and, you know, is the person that he ultimately wants to get revenge against...
...and that he wants to take out.
And so it kind of-- It was an interesting opportunity to play around...
...with some of those, you know, motivational issues with the character...
...and to try to-- The goal was always to kind of put these things in front of him...
...which could be stumbling blocks from him staying professional...
...and sticking to his investigation.
And the fact that here by the end of the scene...
...that he doesn't pursue it, that he doesn't go towards him...
...like, it says enough then about him...
...that he has managed to maintain some kind of, you know, professional integrity...
...no matter how much it hurts him.
Okay, so a lot of people will question just how the--
How--? I mean, how the hell did Prakoso manage to land this woman as his wife?
She's a hell of a lot younger than him, a hell of a lot better-looking than him.
He's certainly punching above his weight.
But-- Likewise, with most of the other characters...
...I always had this image in my head, these ideas of back-story for these guys.
Like, I didn't wanna go too far into their back-story within the film.
But it was always there in the back of my mind.
And I'd always tell the actors...
...about what their life story was in terms of these characters.
And for me, Prakoso, like, I always saw him as this guy who--
Right now, he's in his sort of, like, you know, late 50s, early 60s.
But, you know, back in the day when he was in his, like, late 30s, early 40s...
...like, he was this, like, you know, suave, well-dressed guy...
...you know, cropped hair, you know, clean-cut, nice, crisp suits.
And, you know, he impressed this young girl...
...who was like 16, 17 at the time, was out in the club...
...and then she became his girlfriend, and he took her out, romanced her.
They got married when she was way too young.
She's like 20 some-- Twenty-year-old bride to him.
And then they had this kid together and then, boom.
All of a sudden, one night out, they get attacked when they're in the car.
And then he flies into a rage and becomes the killer...
...that he's been hiding from her all along.
And so while she is there in the car trying to shield their--
Like, their little son's eyes away from seeing the father turn into a monster...
...outside he is that monster...
...and he's just doing that instinctive thing...
...that has been his payment throughout his entire life.
And so, yeah, I had this whole back-story that I was gonna plan to do.
And we might actually do it in the end in a comic-book format...
...but it was-- It's-- It was--
It was a way to kind of alleviate some of those question marks...
...over, you know, just what is this couple?
This is a little bit of a piss-take. This is a little too far.
Like, we were pushing to kind of make, like, Prakoso's character...
...seem totally pathetic and sort of sympathetic and sad.
But the fact that he still has a fucking '80s pager...
...was a little step too far for my Art Department for that one.
But I know it was a personal request.
Like, he could really afford to have a phone by now.
So the pager is kind of pushing it a little bit too much.
That's Ami. He's one of the camera assistants.
He got to do his little cameo there on the decks.
This was out in Bandung.
We used a couple of locations in Bandung.
And I really like it out there. It's about a two-hour drive from Jakarta.
And this club was great because we had an idea of what we wanted...
...for the night-club scene, but it didn't look anything like this.
And then we suddenly get to this building...
...and we get to see this big dance floor.
And then also more impressive...
...these sort of tiered seating areas that kept going up and up and up.
And I knew we could do something really cool...
...with a nice, big, long sort of like, you know, crane shot...
...that would go into the drama.
And so, yeah, I mean, this location sold itself to us immediately.
We were, "This is gonna help not just with our establishing shot...
...but we get to do something interesting as we kind come into this conversation."
But also later on when we get into the fight sequence...
...that we would have something interesting to use...
...to kind of play around with the movement and the rhythm of the fight.
Because initially we designed it purely...
...with, like, a sort of a flat sort of, you know, surface.
Like a couple of crash mats we use in the office.
We didn't have a sense of perspective or space.
But once you kind of have these elements...
...these locations with those sort of tiered floors...
...and tiered sort of private booths...
...then, you know, we have this opportunity then...
...to kind of really explore the set a lot more...
...and have him jump and climb and run and, you know, leap back down...
...avoid all these guys.
And, yeah, it just kind of-- It gave so much to the scene.
So, yeah, very happy that we kind of got this location in the end.
One of the things I wanted to do here...
...is to establish this sense of the relationship between them...
...and to kind of have this almost like an uncle and nephew approach...
...to how Prakoso and Uco are.
That it'd have been established way before he became...
...this, like, vagabond assassin type.
And so there's no difference in their relationship...
...in the way they talk to each other...
...regardless of how much Prakoso's character has fallen.
I wanted to kind of have that sense of, like...
...that he was somebody who Uco could trust as a child...
...who he could talk to. There's that idea-- Uco couldn't talk to his father.
Every time he tried to say something or be close to him...
...his father would back away and not show love...
...not show any kind of, you know, opening...
...for him to be able to discuss anything.
And so that complex within him and his father...
...has kind of created a stronger bond between him and Prakoso, his uncle.
Or as we see now, and as we're gonna feel and people--
Audience will hopefully have felt from the get-go...
...there's a certain Judas element at play here.
And we know that-- You know, that this is Uco's ambition...
...letting him, you know-- Uco's ambition establishing...
...that, like, no one is gonna get in his way.
Nobody's going to kind of be important enough to stop him...
...from achieving his goals.
And that's taken to the absolute extreme later on in the movie.
Notice the cameo there of the white guy in the gray shirt...
...the Indonesian guy in the red shirt.
That is actually Matt Flannery, the DOP, and Mascot, our lighting gaffer.
You've never seen two people more excited...
...to share screen time together than those two.
Okay, so this was, like, a surreal moment in the film here.
We have this sequence here when he's looking at the photograph of his son...
...and, you know, he's in this nightclub and then--
It's packed to the rafters early. We had, like, people everywhere.
And I wanted to do this, like, extremely surreal sort of sound design...
...and then visual thing...
...whereby on the cut, we suddenly-- It's completely dead.
It's completely empty and everyone is gone.
And for me, like, it was always touch and go...
...and it was gonna live or die by the sound mix.
I feel like we kind of fixed that in the end.
We really got it to kind of work and then feel, like....
You know, it took some of that sort of, you know, abstract surrealism...
...about the setup and diluted it...
...in a way where we could feel like, okay, it works now.
But, like, yeah, before we got to that point in the post-pro...
...there was a lot of people with questions...
...about how that was exactly going to work.
I gotta say, I just love watching Yayan fighting people.
He always kind of, like, manages to fill this...
...especially this scene. Fills it with so much kind of like desperation and--
Sort of like every movement feels like it's the last possible minute...
...before you can attack, before somebody else is gonna get to him.
And he really does sell the sort of like escalation of the fight here.
This is an example of, like where--
When he runs across that balcony, none of that was in the choreography.
None was designed or predetermined.
It was just something that once we got the location...
...that we just wanted to do, we just wanted to add.
So we have our Ip Man homage here, like....
I think everyone loved this moment from Ip Man.
And we thought, fuck it, let's just pay our respects to them...
...and just put something in there from it.
You know, just to kind of like-- I don't know, it's because we'd never--
We-- Like, as Indonesian martial arts filmmakers...
...we never get to really talk to or hang out with anyone that--
Any of our peers who are from different countries.
And it's kind of like sometimes--
You put these little messages in your films to say:
"Yeah, we're watching. We're really impressed with what you do."
And that was just an opportunity to do that with them.
So the snow.
I've already explained it with my pretentious bullshit reasons why.
So, yeah, it's just-- Enjoy the beauty of it...
...because it just looks so good with all the action going on.
And the blood contrasts so strongly with the white of the snow.
It just looks so great like--
We had to combine a lot of different things...
...because we didn't have, you know, snow falling in the shot.
All of this are all sort of CG snow then from Andi, my online guy.
This guy who's about to have his head smashed, I gotta give credit to him...
...because he is one of the most fearless Stuntmen we've ever worked with...
...and has done so much for us.
That's Yandi, and he was in the first Raid.
He was the guy that reached under the table...
...to pull the machete out.
And in this film, he stunt-doubled for Epy...
...he stunt-doubled for the Assassin, Cecep...
...he stunt-doubled for so many people.
He stunt-doubled for Yayan when he jumped off the balcony.
And he's been one of those guys that will just do anything for you.
And so he wanted a small moment in the film.
And so I thought, "We'll kill you...
...but it's gonna be the most nasty, violent way that we could kill you."
And so he's always been a sport and always been somebody...
...who's like, you know, very close to us and Merantau Films.
And, yeah, we're looking forward to working with him again.
Yeah, in the next couple of months actually for Night Comes For Us.
So the use of Handel, "Sarabande," the song...
...I spent a long time searching for songs.
To be honest, I've always been a Kubrick fan.
Massive fan of Kubrick. I've seen everything he's done...
...except for Barry Lyndon.
And so, like, I stumbled upon this track...
...when I was searching for classical pieces and operatic music.
I figured if we're gonna go to this extreme of having this snow fall...
...and we're gonna go to this extreme of having the betrayal...
...that sort of Judas betrayal between, you know, Uco and Prakoso...
...and then the introduction of the Assassin, I wanted it to be big.
I wanted it to feel like there was this huge sort of like emotional element to it.
And so, like-- You know, it just made sense.
It just felt like, okay, this song came along and I played it a bunch of times.
I cut it into Final Cut Pro...
...and the timing of it just fit. It just fit so well.
And so it was a no-brainer for me.
So we had Aria Prayogi and Andreas Arianto...
...do a rearrangement based off a version that I had kind of found on a CD.
And then they went ahead and then did a rearrangement of the piece...
...and then recorded it and-- Like, to be honest, you know...
...as much as I love the whole, you know, scoring sessions with the music...
...and with the electronic stuff and how great that fits...
...the adrenaline-packed action sequences...
...sitting there, watching them record this music was just beautiful.
It was like-- It was something I had never experienced before.
It's definitely something that I'm looking forward...
...to kind of maybe trying out in a larger scale...
...on one of my next projects and-- It was just....
It was so much fun to kind of just sit down...
...listen to these super talented musicians...
...come in and record layer after layer after layer...
...of just classical music.
It was just-- Yeah, it was a joy to be there that day.
Prakoso's line of work made him enemies.
Not just the Gotos. Hell, even the Chinese wanted his head.
This wasn't the first time he'd been under attack.
Sadly it was the last.
-Where the fuck have you been? -What happened?
So this is one thing that kind of occasionally....
It crops up as a criticism, and I do get it...
...but it's like, people talk about how Rama's investigation...
...gets pushed back...
...and it gets pushed into the distance in terms of the story line.
And then it becomes more about, like, Uco and his ambitions.
But, like, for me, like, that was always the intention.
I didn't wanna go into this...
...making the traditional undercover cop investigation story.
Like, you know-- I kind of-- We kind of plant these seeds in it throughout...
...where we have little moments where Bunawar will say directly to Rama...
...you know, like, "You're not the spider. You're just part of the web."
Like, you know-- Like in the traditional sort of like, you know...
...Hollywood version of an undercover cop story...
...he'd be the guy that finds that one key piece of evidence...
...that puts away all these bad guys and solves the case...
...everything's done, wrapped up in a little bow.
But for me, like...
...I wanted to have this ultimate version where we confound those expectations...
...do something different, something new.
So it was more important and more interesting...
...to be able to have this thing of, like, he starts off with his investigation...
...we see him do his investigation...
...we see him planting the wire in Uco's wallet...
...we see him monitoring what he's doing, his daily activities...
...we see him establishing a good rapport with the father...
...and trying to kind of work his way up the power chain...
...the chain of command, so he can listen to more of those conversations...
...and find out where that money's going.
But then all of a sudden, a gang war kicks off.
And then all of a sudden, like, the ambitions of the son...
...overwhelm his investigation...
...it overwhelms his role and what he's supposed to be doing.
And as a result of that, for sure, his story is gonna fall by the wayside...
...because now we have a stronger driving force...
...that's pushing us towards that chaos.
The whole film is about, you know, characters...
...that don't get what they want.
They don't get to have the satisfaction of being able...
...to achieve what their goals are.
Rama, you know, beyond protecting his own family, he wants revenge.
He wants to kill the guy that killed his brother.
That gets taken away from him.
He doesn't get to pull the trigger on that. Somebody else does.
Like, Uco wants to be king.
But in order to be king, he has to do this...
...you know, inexplicable extreme act later on in the movie.
It's temporary. It lasts a few hours, and it's not the dream he'd hoped for.
And, you know, Bunawar wants to arrest all of the corrupt cops...
...and put all these corrupt cops and politicians in prison.
That doesn't happen.
They all get bumped off, and that's not the way he wants it.
And so, yeah, it's all about dissatisfaction amongst these guys...
...who have these, like, outrageously big ambitions in life.
But then those ambitions get taken away from them.
-Did we get the okay? -Fuck the okay.
So we're about to introduce Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man...
...and the whole host of assassins that work for Bejo.
And this was just, like, so much fun to shoot...
...and this is a great opportunity as well for us to play around with...
...you know, character designs...
...and to play around...
...with, you know, the more comic-bookish elements of the film.
Because, you know, we're dealing with characters here...
...which are not from the real world.
They're sort of pop icon images, they're--
You know, they're designed, you know, specifically...
...to not be like you and I.
They're larger than life.
And so it was kind of a challenge in a way to kind of figure out...
...okay, well, how far can we go?
How far can we push this and for it still to work...
...and for it to still feel like, at least in terms of the action...
...that happens on screen, that we're not breaking those logic laws...
...that we had sort of, like, established in the first few movies?
So I guess I'll talk now a little bit about the origin story...
...for Hammer Girl and Baseball Bat Man, seeing as we're watching this coin spin...
...because it actually relates to what I wanted to do for their origin.
The coin spinning is actually significant.
And basically the whole setup of it was the idea that when they were children...
...the father would sit them down at a table and then spin a coin.
And if the coin landed on a head or a tail, that would be the deciding factor...
...for which one he would be aggressive towards, violently abusive towards.
And so they were born and raised in this-- Like, this house...
...of, like, domestic violence, you know, led by their father.
And the idea was that...
...like, one day, Baseball Bat Kid, like, he couldn't take it anymore...
...and then when the coin landed on his sister...
...he took the coin, then tried to turn it over.
Like the wrong move to make...
...and the father kind of took it out even more so on Hammer Girl then.
And basically, like, a switch went off in his head...
...and Baseball Bat Man started to attack the father...
...and Hammer Girl joined the attack.
The idea is that they both, you know, collectively killed the father.
And if you know anything about, like, the Kampung Aer...
...the small village areas in Indonesia, like, you know, talk spreads fast...
...but maybe the cops don't listen quickly enough.
And so the idea is that while this sort of chaos is going on...
...and this curse is ensuing, word spreads...
...and then this young 20-year-old sort of upstart Bejo...
...sends his men and his guys to collect the two kids.
And so then they've grown up as part of Bejo's life...
...as part of Bejo's sort of like children...
...that've kind of been raised to become...
...these, like, violent sort of killers that work on his behalf.
And so in the characters then we've established...
...little sort of like immature details in them.
We introduce these elements which are kind of childlike about them.
Baseball Bat Man, when he hits the guys with the ball...
...then says, "Give me the ball back, please."
Like a kid that's knocked his ball over...
...into the backyard of some neighbor's house and then asks for it back.
When they sat at the bar, he's got, like, a glass of milk in front of him.
There's tiny details along the way...
...and then later on when they get told to take out Rama...
...and, you know, Hammer Girl--
She's deaf and mute, doesn't hear anything that's going on...
...all of a sudden, Baseball Bat Man grabs her by the arm...
...to pull her like a child would, like a brother and sister thing.
She stumbles out of her chair...
...reaches back like a child just to grab her hammers.
It's this kind of like contradiction really--
You know, the sheer extreme and brutality of what they do and--
Mixed in with these childlike elements along the way.
Like they-- It's like it's playtime to them.
I should talk about the characters, the actors...
...playing these roles. Julie Estelle is Hammer Girl.
She's like a very well-respected actress in her own right...
...and she's been the lead actress for a number of films.
She was in Rumah Dara again, the Mo Brothers' film.
So you really do know now I am stealing pretty much everyone...
...that Timo and Kimo have ever cast before for my movies.
And so, yeah, so she was in that and I was impressed with her.
Again, she was one of those ones we contacted three or four years ago.
Had to wait, come back, re-audition. And she trained so hard for this role.
She's not a martial artist.
She wasn't somebody who had any basic training in fighting.
But she came in and she trained for like six months...
...to play this role. For her to do that...
...for a role made up of two scenes of fighting and one scene of drama...
...to give up all of her time for that, I was so impressed.
And so I'm desperate to work with her again on something.
I feel she's got the potential. She could go big now in terms of this.
And if she wants to make this a serious career, she's got the ability.
Then Very Tri Yulisman as the Baseball Bat Man...
...he's incredible.
I just love watching this guy fight.
He's from Iko's school as well...
...and he actually had a small role in The Raid 1.
He was one of the fighters that Iko took out in the drugs lab.
He came on board to help out with some of the choreography...
...and was training with Julie for a while.
And so they just developed this great chemistry...
...this great, kind of like, you know, working relationship...
...where it seemed to fit. One of those things where I was:
"Well, maybe we just try them out."
And we just fluked out. We got so lucky...
...because, you know, I found Iko and Yayan...
...as, you know, silat guys, experts...
...that managed to also handle the performance really well.
And now we had it again.
Not just with Very as Baseball Bat Man...
...but here we go, Cecep Arif Rahman as the Assassin.
I don't know what it is. I just keep lucking out.
I keep finding these guys who have extremely cool...
...sort of like personas...
...like, very expressive performances.
And, you know, all from almost zero experience...
...of being in front of a camera before.
So, yeah, they're memorable characters, each and every one of them.
And so this whole sequence was just a blast to put together.
It was pretty tough actually...
...kind of, like, in terms of the balancing of time between each one...
...because, like, obviously Hammer Girl's fight is very long.
You know, it's a longer process...
...with the amount of opponents she has compared to something like Cecep's...
...where there's just one guy and it's almost over immediately.
It was quite a struggle to kind of figure out...
...where we would put these cuts in and--
Like, you know, intercut between each one...
...without it feeling too imbalanced.
So here's the moment where we almost step over the line...
...in terms of what we can get away with as a real, you know, fighting discipline.
It's the Babe Ruth moment coming up here.
We had a lot of questions in the scripting of this.
Like, the guys at XYZ were sort of like...
...you know, uncertain about it...
...and very worried about, like, how would it play.
But my approach is always like, look, it is absurd.
Absolutely ridiculous that he would be able to do this.
But, you know, let's present it in a way...
...where I'll shoot it so that I make it feel like it's a matter-of-fact.
And I'll shoot it in a way where it doesn't feel absurd.
And then, you know, you get this odd combination then...
...of, like, this surreal action design...
...but present it so matter-of-fact you can't help...
...but either take it seriously or laugh at it.
And either option is fine.
So Julie in this scene--
Okay, so this-- Actually this set, this train station...
...this subway train set, we had to build it ourselves.
We tried to get a real one, but it proved almost impossible.
Like, the budget was just ridiculous for renting a real train.
So we built it entirely on a sound studio...
...with like suspension springs underneath...
...so we could rock the entire carriage and get all the handles to rock with it.
We saw the sense of movement with the lights...
...by having a bunch of sort of scaffolding set up along the side of the train...
...with big lights pointing at these rotating mirrors...
...that would send the light in streams...
...going down to the subway train to help sell the effect then.
Okay, so there you go. Those are the three assassins.
And that was a very extreme sequence there.
And it was originally--
Initially, we were gonna cut back to the festival.
The festival was like a Reog performance.
That's like a traditional Indonesian festival.
I wanted to cut back into that...
...to have another, you know, gun battle between the two rival groups...
...to show the escalation of the gang war. We cut it in the end for pacing.
Because we were staying way away from Rama for too long.
So then we cut to this scene instead to kind of like--
We could still have that sense of escalation of a gang war...
...and then also introduce, like, the--
What we later discovered...
...is that he's coming under attack from the cops.
Yeah, it was-- That other scene had to go and this kind of took its place then.
This setup though, the idea of a guy being attacked in a car like that...
...it's actually based on a true story.
I'd heard about a friend of mine who was, like, a member of the police...
...and during the London riots, a friend of his was on patrol...
...in a police car, and then when he came to a traffic light...
...as he stopped at the traffic lights and it hit red...
...all of a sudden, a bunch of teens came...
...running out of the alleyways with scaffolding bars...
...and smashed the windows in, hit him in the face.
As he looked up from the floor, he could see knives coming...
...trying to hit him. He ended up having to do the same thing.
Push down on the gas pedal with his hand and get himself out of there.
Thankfully he was okay, but, like, it's the--
For me, like, once I'd kind of heard that, it was that thing of instant fear...
...because this is like--
It's such a terrifying claustrophobic space...
...and so I thought, like, you know, it's like a nightmarish situation.
It gave me an opportunity to jump...
...into that horror genre aspect that we had in the first film again...
...but with another action sequence.
This was a very important moment for me in terms of the character for Rama.
We have this--
Until now it was all kind of like playful with the choreography.
That usual thing we do with the punch lines.
But now what we do here is we have an element...
...where it's pushing the boundaries...
...of, like, you know, what we're allowing him as a protagonist to do.
Are we gonna follow him this far down?
He starts to kind of show this side of him where he's getting more sadistic...
...getting more drawn into the violence of the world around him.
And, like, he holds that guy's head on the hot plate for so long...
...that I wanted it to be a moment in the audience's mind...
...where they're starting to question, well, can I still follow him?
Can I still call him my hero of my film...
...when, you know, he's taken us down this route...
...that maybe we don't want to follow?
And again, like, the kind of, like, to hark back to that thing...
...of, like, not focusing on the pain...
...like when it came to that sequence, it was a very conscious decision...
...to kind of show almost the entire sequence...
...showing his expression, not showing the guy on the hot plate.
We show a little insert here and there, but it's on Rama's expression...
...to kind of sell that conflict within him...
...that sort of anger building within himself...
...about what he's willing to go through...
...and how much he's fighting against that rage...
...to kind of get over the fact...
...that he got suddenly attacked by these guys...
...in such a brutal and nightmarish fashion.
I wanna talk a little bit about Kazuki Kitamura...
...because he was another element of the Japanese gang...
...that we cast as well.
He'd worked on a film that I produced for the Mo Brothers to make, Killers.
And in that film he was cast alongside Oka Antara...
...also in this film, in this scene.
They're both playing opposite numbers here.
So it was an interesting opportunity.
Kazuki had come over to Jakarta for Killers.
And we talked to him and we said:
"Okay, well, we do have a role, but it's small.
If you're interested in coming and doing this...
...we can try to find something cool for you to do.
And so fair play to him, I mean, he came on board...
...and these guys got on so well.
The three Japanese actors got on so well together.
I think this was the first time actually the three of them...
...had been in a film together.
It was kind of like a milestone for them and they're so well-established now...
...that it was just a dream for me to be able to work with them on it.
And besides, like, the Japanese cast...
...we also had the benefit of working with, you know...
...a number of senior actors. Here's one.
It's Deddy Sutomo, who plays the mediator...
...for this scene in the film.
He was a joy to work with as well.
It's one of these things where we were lucky on this.
We had, like, a lot of experienced actors...
...that brought a lot of sort of, you know, character to the film.
They were a joy to work with.
They seemed to really respond to what we were doing...
...and I guess they see that what we're trying to do--
Especially in terms of for the Indonesian film industry is important.
Like, we're not sort of like making the job easy for ourselves.
We're trying to push, stretch these projects out...
...and make them as ambitious as we possibly can.
And so, like, you know, Deddy...
...Pong Harjatmo and then Roy Marten...
...who we'll meet later on again as well, alongside Cok and Tio...
...these guys have supported us massively.
They've always been complimentary...
...of our work ethic, and the passion and the hard work...
...that went into the crew.
So, yeah, it's been a great experience...
...to kind of work with those guys, and, like--
Yeah, a lot of them I can't wait to work with again.
So we touched on a little something earlier on in the film where--
This kind of comes back, and I'm not sure, like...
...how much clarity there is to this. There was always--
I have this thing, whereby, there are certain things you guys--
You see first time around, you'll pick up on...
...some things you probably won't.
One thing I don't like to do is kind of just--
Is to spoon-feed too much in terms of the information.
So earlier on in the film...
...when we saw him switching the SIM cards around...
...it was kind of clear in a way that, you know, he would use one...
...in order to be able to call, like, Bunawar or his wife...
...or anyone close to him.
The other one was purely for any communication he had...
...with the people he was investigating.
You know, Eka, Bangun or Uco.
And so, like, this is one of those moments...
...where as we start to kind of focus on this entire conversation...
...between him and Bunawar...
...when he does hang up eventually...
...that we realize that, you know, this SIM card hadn't been changed.
And so when he gets the call from Eka, the intent is there...
...that he's made a call to Bunawar from the SIM...
...that was provided to him by the mob family.
So if they are keeping tabs on him, if they are looking up the--
His itemized billing, whatever the hell.
They'd know he made a call to someone. They'd be able to trace that, figure out...
...he had a connection to someone, who is that person.
Would they be able to figure out he was an undercover cop...
...based off that information?
It is kind of a stretch in a way...
...because we don't give that much away...
...in terms of hinting at it too much, but, like--
I don't know, maybe it's something that you guys pick up on.
Another aspect was that thing of, like-- This was in the original script...
...and this was kind of something that carried over into here...
... to show maybe like a sense of, like, strength and resolve in his character...
...the idea that, you know, he was preparing himself to leave.
He was getting ready to kind of like, you know, disappear from the underworld...
...even though, you know, his responsibility as an undercover cop...
...is to see it through to the end.
But, you know, it was the idea of planting those seeds of doubt.
That idea that, you know, when we get to the end of the film...
...we understand where he reaches. We understand where he is...
...when he wants to get out of this life and just be done with it.
So this sequence here, I'm so proud of Arif and Tio here...
...because they nailed this sequence.
And the whole slapping idea...
...it came from a Takeshi Kitano film called Violent Cop.
There's a superb sort of interrogation scene...
...where Kitano pretty much slaps this guy about 40 to 50 times...
...like really full-on.
But I wanted to do that...
...but in a way where it would work more for the emotional drama of the scene...
...that it would kind of wind up Uco to the point where he would explode.
And so, yeah, it was--
There was a moment between Arifin and Tio when they discussed it...
...and they kind of, you know, did a couple of mild hits at first...
...and when it came to the take, it was:
"Okay, you go full-on now, and then let's just do this in one go."
And so I held on it. We held this shot entirely for one take...
...all the way through till the end of the drama here.
So I was very, very happy and actually very happy with what I got.
The range of emotions here from Arifin is so strong.
Even when there's a line that he kind of half laughs.
It just feels natural. It feels like it's part of it all.
You've destroyed us.
You've destroyed everything.
One of the things I liked about this scene, especially in terms of Arifin's delivery...
...because, like, we are trying to sort of hide the fact that...
...you know, this is all still a setup, that this is all, you know, pre-designed...
...that the idea is that Bejo's men are on their way.
They're about to arrive in that building at this moment.
And here, there's like a genuine look...
...of, like, worry and nervousness in Arifin's face.
You know, he-- And that was all about the idea of, you know...
...it's like the last throw of the dice for him.
So when his father punches him, that's the deciding moment for Arifin then.
For Uco's character, sorry.
Everything before that, that sort of desperation of "I can fix this...
...we can fix this," it's almost like I believe him.
I believe that he does believe that he can fix this...
...and he's almost wanting his father to kind of just--
To embrace him and to take on board like, you know...
...and to say, "Okay. We will work together."
It's like a desperate moment that before he knows that Bejo is about to come in...
...because the moment that Bejo comes in, that's it, decision made then.
And we know, you know, what's about to happen to the father.
So, yeah, it was an interesting little sort of like exchange between them...
...where it's almost like if he hadn't punched him...
...maybe Uco could have done something...
...could have stopped this from happening.
But now, of course, it's too late.
Forgive me.
We made a conscious decision here...
...to not have the sound effect of the gun.
We just felt that it kind of played a lot stronger...
...to the actual impact of the moment.
It kind of gave it a subtlety to it that we felt was more important...
...than the kind of-- You know, the sudden crash of something...
...that was gonna be more visceral.
And, you know, that whole process was a major part of the sound mix...
...and the sound design that we did in Skywalker Sound in San Francisco.
Now, they came on board to help us out with the postproduction...
...through our connection with Joe Trapanese.
Joe Trapanese had worked on Oblivion, the score...
...and they did a lot of the mixing there in the sound mixing studios...
...at Skywalker Ranch.
And so I was put in touch with Jonathan Greber...
...who's, like, pretty much the greatest guy I've worked with in terms of sound.
And he took a look at our project and he was like a fan of the first film...
...and just, you know, I always had that kind of expectation of:
There's no way we can afford him. There's no way we can do that there...
...because it's such, you know, a big company.
Like, you associate it with Star Wars.
You associate it with that legacy of what they've achieved.
I'm thinking, "They're not gonna wanna touch...
...this little Indonesian movie that we're making."
But in all fairness to him, and he came through...
...and asked us what we wanted, what we needed...
...what we could afford, what our budget was...
...and then, you know, found a way to make it work.
So we had the best time working there. It was such an incredible experience.
But what was great about it was the fact that they were open...
...to, like, you know, my ideas for how I wanted...
...to, you know, stylize some of the sound mix...
...and play around with the idea of when to go big, when to go loud...
...but also when to come down to complete silence...
...and play in that kind of dynamic range a lot more.
And, you know, they were all open to that.
And also, the great side of it was that...
...through the guys there, like Zach, Brandon, Doug...
...there was so much--
And Danielle, they all kind of brought so many ideas to the plate...
...and we had so much fun working together on it.
Like, it was hard. It was, like, long hours...
...but if I had an idea, there was sort of like a straightforward approach to it.
Like, if something was a bad idea, they'd tell me it was a bad idea.
But then they would throw in about four or five ideas...
...to kind of compensate for that.
And it was just a real good, creative process and--
And great for Ogi and Fajar to come on board as well...
...because they were working as sound designers...
...and they got to come in and experience that whole side of it as well.
And so the idea of us working on these projects...
...and being able to bring elements of postproduction or production...
...to another country, it's great for us...
...because we can train ourselves, learn from it...
...get these experiences, so that when we go back to Indonesia...
...we've got a new approach on how to work on things.
And so, yeah, it's been a great process.
And speaking of learning from other people...
...we reach our car chase, our big car chase for the film.
This was, like, without doubt, the biggest undertaking...
...that I have ever had in terms of an action sequence.
It was our first time to ever do this...
...and we couldn't have done this without the help of Mike Leeden..
...a good friend of mine who's worked in the casting--
The casting of many, many Hong Kong films, and like finding talent...
...for movies that are being produced in Hong Kong or outside of there.
And he put me in touch...
...with the incredibly skillful and crazy Bruce Law and his stunt team.
Bruce has had credits on so many films...
...I have geeked out over over the years...
...working with John Woo and Jackie Chan...
...on Police Story and The Killer and Hard Boiled.
All of these films that have been like milestone films in terms of action cinema...
...for me and part of my generation growing up watching them.
So to have him on board helping us execute these sequences...
...and executing these stunts was just like a-- It was a dream come true.
So, yeah, we've worked together on this...
...and we spent about a month or two maybe just designing the sequence.
And I came to him already with a pre-designed sequence...
...and what I wanted to achieve with it, and I gave him...
...like, very specific, detailed shot lists...
...and video storyboards of where I want to put the camera...
...where I want to move it, and he would take all that and then say:
"Okay. We can do that, but then let's add a few cameras here"...
...and then give me, like, a bunch of other options that I could use...
...in order to, you know, really make the scene pop.
And so it was invaluable to have him and his team on board...
...to make sure that, like, this entire sequence went by without a hitch.
And so, yeah, this was-- This was just ferocious.
Real hard-- Hard graft on this.
These are, like, four or five different locations throughout Jakarta.
This one is Sunter.
This road is always closed...
...but it is the most busy area for traffic...
...in Jakarta I have been to for a long time.
So when we were shooting there...
...we were breathing the fumes of so many different cars...
...and then, also, having to listen to numerous people...
...teach me the many, many ways to swear at you in Indonesian.
We were not the best friends of the people of Indonesia...
...when we were shooting these sequences.
The delays in the traffic actually made the news broadcasts in Indonesia.
Talking about, "What is this production...
...that is, you know, causing this traffic pileup?"
And we all knew who it was, but we kept quiet.
We needed to keep finishing our shoot first.
One of the things I wanted to do here in this car chase--
Because we couldn't afford to do things...
...that you can do in a Fast & Furious movie...
...where you throw different cars through the same building...
...and then go for a flat-out spectacle. I knew we had to be more careful...
...about how we used cars, we didn't have many.
So previously, like, we started to focus on things that we could make...
...which were unique to Indonesia or unique to this type of film...
...that we wanted to make. So, for me, was that thing of like--
Toro, my producer suggested we should use the bus way...
...which is a very unique thing in Indonesia...
...that big sort of glass, metal complex earlier.
That would be one of our punch lines. The other thing is this punch line here.
You never normally see the body fly out the car.
That was one thing I realized when watching action films...
...is that whenever they do a car chase, it's the car, it's the metal...
...and the glass that flies across the road.
It's never the person inside it.
So you almost get this, like, you know, not irresponsible...
...you almost get this sense of "these cars can smash all over the place...
...it doesn't change anything."
What I wanted to do was to be like, "Let's see what happens to that guy."
So the construction of that shot was done in a way...
...where we keep it all from the top shot...
...all from a bird's-eye view, not cut away...
...and just show the actual impact of that car hitting the wall...
...and then comp in, like, the image of the fighter...
...flying through the windscreen...
...so that you get it all in one take and you get this sense of it being sort of like--
Like a gonzo moment in the film.
So all of a sudden, you know, you've got this thing that feels so real...
...and then people hopefully will start to question:
"What do they do to the Stuntmen? How do they execute these shots?"
When in reality, it's so, so safe the way we did it.
I guess one of the things I wanted to play around with then--
And here you go, this is another one.
--is like referencing the first movie. So in the first movie...
...we had the sequence where Jaka did the triple tap to the guy's face.
I was thinking, "How can we top that?" Well, I was a big fan of Dobermann...
...and there's a scene where they were shooting at this biker, let's top that...
...and then in the process of doing that, let's top our Raid 1 triple-tap moment.
And I have, like, a mad respect for Dobermann...
...because I absolutely love that film on a stylistic level.
But I really wanted to kind of push and push and push...
...and then see what we could come up with.
And again, you know, using this opportunity...
...to showcase an action sequence inside the back of the car...
...where it's completely claustrophobic...
...and intercut with moments where we jump out wide.
So it's a case of playing around with the spatial diversity of this scene...
...where we're allowed to go epic, to go big...
...we're allowed to have a moment here like, you know...
...who can load the gun the fastest in a sort of little Mexican standoff...
...while they're driving cars down this speeding motorway...
...and then combine this with these big, big, big set-piece moments...
...with this, like, super tight, claustrophobic fight...
...when we get back into that other car.
And that seemed to be the key.
Like, let's treat it like everything's a piece of choreography.
Let's treat every bump of every car...
...like it's a construct of the choreography...
...the same way that these blocks and punches are made to be designed...
...to kind of play out like a certain rhythm and a percussive element.
So too should the bumps of the car, the metal hitting the car...
...and the glass smashing in the windows.
It was just a big, huge sort of like design process.
It took a long time to get going.
We shot for about 12 days, 13 days to get this stuff done.
But, yeah, thankfully, a combination of the final product...
...and then also, I gotta say, one of the most exciting pieces of music...
...that I've had play on anything I've done with film.
It just elevated the whole scene so much more.
And, like, I'm really proud of the work that my crew put in...
...in order to kind of get the scene done the way we did it.
Okay, we can cool down a little bit now.
So this is the-- Goto's office...
...and this was actually designed-- We based our design here...
...on the very sort of like archetypal sort of Japanese Yakuza bosses...
...administration offices, like you'd see in the films there.
So everything down from the color scheme...
...the furniture, the table, the low tables, the safe in the corner and everything...
...and then sort of the family emblem on the wall...
...it's all kind of like, you know--
Like a reference and like a stereotype in a way...
...from the Japanese Yakuza films I used to watch from the 70s and '80s and '90s.
So we're playing to archetypes here.
We're playing to that kind of--
That stylized sort of Yakuza element I've always loved watching as a kid.
Even down to the way we shot it too, like, you know...
...there's these very slow, purposeful sort of like dolly track shots.
The camera angles, I wanted to keep it kind of low...
...and, you know, never above Goto, and always kind of--
You know, the sort of stillness to it.
There's never a shot where the camera is kind of like floating or hand-held.
It's always kind of static on tripod. I wanted to kind of reflect that...
...because I've always been a big fan of Japanese cinema.
So to have a visual style, I was able to kind of, you know, fit my sort of--
My geeky approach to Japanese cinema...
...was a nice sort of refreshing change to us.
All throughout the rest of the film, whenever there was an action scene...
...we were going so hard with the aggressiveness...
...and the movement of the camera.
I think both Matt and Dimas...
...my two DOPs who have worked with me on the last three films...
...I think they relished this opportunity...
...to just take a breath and just, like, you know, let the camera rest...
...and just let the performances play through.
One thing about the performance...
...is there's such consistency between them.
When it came to the Japanese cast--
We noticed a lot of the Indonesian cast...
...they would kind of improvise a little bit between take to take.
But the Japanese cast, they would lock in...
...and then they would-- They would figure out...
...how they wanted to play that scene in rehearsals...
...and then just do it take for take the same.
Gestures would be the same, timing of movement, the same...
...and it made my life easier then in the edit...
...because I could use any take of any shot...
...and I know that it would connect to whatever else we had of them.
So it was kind of an interesting process for that.
This location sadly does not exist in Indonesia.
We just created a matte painting in CG...
...in order to kind of have this huge, big landscape...
...of, like, a rundown building complex.
We had a location for it booked in.
We'd found this construction site which would have been perfect for us...
...and would have fit so nicely...
...but when it came time to start shooting, they'd sold the land to a construction--
Another construction, sorry, that was actually doing something with it.
So by the time we were ready to shoot then, that whole area had gone.
So this place where we shot...
...we actually used it for the exterior of Bejo's restaurant as well.
So when Rama goes to drive in through those metal doors...
...to get into the delivery area of the restaurant, this is all the same location.
It's the same area. So we shot this in the day...
...waited for nightfall, and shot the rest...
...with Rama driving in through the door at night.
And so basically, yeah, for the wide shot...
...we would end up...
...you know, painting out all of the set that we had there...
...and then, you know, extending the whole look of the thing...
...to kind of be this rundown, dilapidated area.
If you want out....
So this was the reinforcement then as well.
This was kind of the revelation of Iko's character being an undercover cop.
All of them.
And, you know, the idea that he'd been hung out to dry by his superiors...
...then it's like he knows that this is the last person that's gonna see him alive.
He's had these things he's wanted to say for so many years, and gets to say them.
He gets to, you know, clear the air on his character...
...and who he is and what he was...
...moments before he's about to kind of-- To pass on.
And it also served that idea of kind of, you know...
...giving Rama that incentive in a way...
...that idea that, like, he can't just go back and pick up his bag and leave.
He can't just get out that easily.
That something has to be done in order for him to leave this world...
...and still be able to live his life with his wife, with his kid.
And so that idea of, you know, taking them all out...
...that's basically, you know, Martial Arts Action Film 101 motivation there...
...where, you know, you give your hero a task...
...and he knows that all it is, is a pure carnage.
So it's kind of like a nod of the hat to the audience as well...
...to know that, like, just because we've just had...
...like, a huge assassin montage sequence...
...and a big car-chase sequence, like, we're definitely not done yet.
Okay, so this is the exterior of the warehouse location.
This was actually shot in exactly the same location as the previous scene.
When we shot this, we didn't have, like, anything...
...like, real and tangible to use as a set.
So all we had really was sort of the steel shutter doors...
...and some, like, you know, props laying around.
And everything was kind of created then in CG.
So the whole extension of the set was done by Andi, my online guy.
What I wanted to do here was to like-- This is sort of papered over.
We shot the-- This is just the aftermath of a crime scene...
...but we shot three police lieutenants being bumped off by the Goto gang.
Some of that featured in the teaser trailer, but we ended up cutting it for pacing...
...because we'd done our montage sequence before...
...with Hammer Girl, Baseball Bat and the Assassin.
I figured it was gonna get, like, overkill.
Some could argue that we already overkilled this anyway.
So we cut those out. They're featured in the teaser trailer...
...but, like, I cut that teaser trailer way back in sort of November.
Then when we were finishing up the film--
We were still editing this up until December time.
So some of that stuff ended up, you know, disappearing...
...and becoming, you know, available now as deleted scenes.
So here we've just established when Iko says:
Like, "Watch over me," he's basically talking to his brother...
...and I wanted to maintain that idea...
...of there being some element of revenge motivating him.
I didn't want to lose sight of that because his ulterior motive is to protect his family.
But deep down what he wants to do is basically get revenge for his brother...
...which later on we find out is that something that gets taken away from him.
Bridging with that idea of the dissatisfaction...
...in terms of all the characters not getting what they want.
That wall earlier, actually, when the guy gets sort of crushed into the wall--
We-- That wall wasn't supposed to break, actually.
The whole plan for that shot was that we were gonna have the guy's body...
...just crushed against this wall and pinned up against it.
But our Art Department forgot to put the sort of cinder blocks...
...on the other side of that brick wall that we'd built for it.
When the car went through, it smashed through the brick wall...
...but also the main structure wall of the warehouse behind.
So then we ended up having to fix that really quickly then...
...so we could carry on shooting...
...and make sure that the structure was safe and sound for us to carry on filming.
The choreography here, we wanted to have this feeling...
...of, like, chaos and freneticism to it.
We ended up having to have Iko running up that ramp then...
...because when we got to the location, the actual space is so big and so large.
When we were designing the fight scenes, we're in a small office space.
So we design these movements, and then we get to this real space...
...and it's so big and so vast, we have to figure out how to position it.
So we always do like a walkthrough of the whole choreography...
...while on location to figure out this happens here, this happens there.
Sometimes our choreography, we design it...
...without actually looking at the-- You know, the location beforehand.
So that stunt area, the stunt guy being sort of thrown head first into a beam...
...we had to build that ramp, build that beam...
...and then obviously put rubber around that...
...for the protection of the stunt guy doing the stunt...
...so that we could get away with having our choreography exact.
And then my poor Art Department and my poor Locations guy...
...have to follow suit in terms of what we wanna do in our choreography then.
This scene here with Uco sort of washing his hands...
...and sort of regrouping himself...
...we shot this very, very early in the shoot.
This was probably around about three days to four days into the shoot...
...and we shot this on location inside a mall called Grand Indonesia.
There was a bathroom stall there.
And one of the things that me and Arifin are kind of both frustrated by...
...is that we did shoot this early.
Although his performance is-- You know, I can't fault it, it's really--
He has a strong performance in terms of carrying the weight and the emotion.
The downside is we made a conscious decision...
...later on in the shoot for everything following him killing his father...
...we wouldn't have dialogue from Uco, he would be silent...
...he would be in this, like, catatonic state of just, like, observation and reflection.
And obviously, you can see here, like, he actually speaks to this character.
So every other scene that we shot post Bangun's death...
...was silent from him, no dialogue at all.
Just all about expression, except for this one...
...which is literally just because we'd shot it so early on in the production.
I'm probably gonna hold my hands up and say that this wire...
...is pretty fucking big, really, to not be noticed at all inside the wallet.
One of those things where you turn up...
...then you've got your props lined up, you show them the design of it...
...and suddenly, you're about to shoot and you see the size of the thing.
So we didn't really have much say in that.
And ideally, really, I'd love to have had something a lot smaller...
...and a lot more sort of realistic-looking...
...in terms of a wire tap inside of a wallet, but, hey, ho.
So here we have Reza returning to the fray.
So this is back to Roy Marten, who is just a fantastic actor.
There's such a lot of respect for him.
Because he's a senior actor, a senior performer in Indonesia...
...and, you know, he was just such a joy to work with.
He brought a lot to the character...
...even though it's only a very limited amount of screen time.
He just nails the tone of the character. He nails that kind of attitude.
And, you know, the way he goads Arifin later on is one of my favorite moments...
...of the character throughout the entire film.
Hey, sidekick.
You're talkative.
So we're playing on that idea of the paranoia here.
One of the things that not everyone picks up on...
...is that idea of, like, when Uco sees the wire...
...the thing about the wire is that it makes him feel suspicious...
...he's being set up, whether this has been something...
...that Bejo and Reza have kind of set up from the get-go.
At the moment, he's suspicious of Reza, and that's why he shoots him that look.
But when we do the reveal of the tattoo...
...it's pretty much all about Uco's paranoia...
...telling him there's two and two together...
...that wire was put by Reza, that they're monitoring him...
...that they're manipulating him...
...and seeing the tattoo and linking it to Benny...
...who was, like, executed earlier on in the restaurant...
...it's almost that sort of a crushing feeling...
...of being completely, you know, manipulated...
...made to feel like a puppet at the hands of Reza and Bejo, which, you know...
...although there's a partial truth there, Reza has, like, no involvement in this.
Like, he wasn't involved in any way, shape or form.
And so it's all about that sort of seething paranoia...
...that ends up resulting later on in the film...
...with Uco kind of taking care of business in a way on behalf of Rama...
...and taking away his ability...
...to sort of get revenge for himself, to protect his family for himself.
Earlier, we saw a shot of Hammer Girl grabbing at her hammers...
...and that was basically designed in a way to play up to the idea...
...of these characters having a sense of childhood about them...
...an immaturity about them.
And so, for me, it was always this case of, you know--
That was a last-minute thing that we added to the film.
That was like an improvisational moment where we were shooting that scene...
...and I wanted something else in there.
I wanted something different to kind of reinforce...
...that sort of immaturity of Baseball Bat and Hammer Girl.
And so I kind of spoke to Julie and told her, I said:
"Keep your back to them. Don't listen to a single word they're saying.
You're deaf anyway, you're not gonna respond...
...to when Bejo sends you guys out."
And so basically, yeah, it was this opportunity for us...
...to, you know, play on those themes of, like, the lost innocence of them...
...the sort of childhood element of the characters.
And here they are again.
This is all the setup ready for them to face off against Rama...
...in this big showdown.
The look of this location actually with the red glass walls...
...was based on a restaurant that exists in Jakarta.
It's a really beautiful Chinese restaurant.
And so whenever I would go there I would take photographs...
...and video reference of the look of the place, these, you know--
These red patent glass walls in this corridor space...
...so that my Art Department could go and make it for them first...
...to kind of use then in terms of the shoot.
So the glass was-- I think we had a few panels...
...that were made out of protective, kind of like strengthened plastic...
...and then glass for anywhere where we needed to make it shatter for real.
This choreography was pretty complex for us to design because, like--
Especially hardest for Iko to perform.
Iko and Very, who plays Baseball Bat Man, they're from the same silat school.
So his comfort level at kicking and punching Very...
...is very sort of like, you know-- He can go full-on.
Like, they trust each other entirely to go full-on.
Iko kept telling me that he struggled a lot...
...whenever it came to doing the punches and kicks at Julie...
...plays Hammer Girl, because although she had proven herself...
...there was this awkward psychological thing...
...where he couldn't quite get into that mode of literally picking her up...
...and throwing her against the window.
So that shot of her hitting against the glass...
...we did that about eight times, nine times...
...because each time Iko kept kind of trying to overprotect her.
He would slam her against the glass and almost lower her to the ground.
Suddenly, I'm telling him, "No, you've gotta go for it."
At this point, Julie's done seven of those falls...
...and each fall, although cushioned and protected...
...it's still-- It's gonna soften you up.
At that point then, it was-- He finally did the one where he let go of her...
...and then that one hurt a lot more, like she'd already been tenderized...
...for want of a better word.
So the moment that Baseball Bat goes into a rage and all the way up to this kill...
...I wanted to play on the emotional part of it.
So-- I didn't want you to hate Baseball Bat and Hammer Girl.
I wanted you to almost like them in a way...
...that you can kind of share in the fact that they have this bond.
And again, this kill then, this final moment...
...with the baseball bat stuck inside his mouth, that was another improvisation.
We didn't really know how to--
I didn't know how I was gonna finish this scene off until we were on set.
And so when-- I knew that the final blow would be, like, this huge heavy blast...
...of the baseball bat into the mouth...
...I had no idea about how to finish on a punch line.
And so, literally, we were on set, and then I'm telling my Art Department to kind of:
"All right, can you prepare this baseball bat with me...
...so that we can cut a chunk out of it...
...and put, like, a bite moment for Very to be able to chew on?"
And then we zip-tied it around his head then and kind of--
Yeah, he sat there very uncomfortably for about, like, three hours...
...with this baseball bat just strapped to his head.
And, yeah, it seems to have paid off.
So far, everyone's sort of had a big response to that.
Now, I'm just gonna watch this shuffle here.
This was sort of like-- The whole stunt right here with the hands...
...the back of the hands, the back of the hand, it's a direct reference...
...and like an homage in a way to, for me, Enter the Dragon...
...for the sort of competition fights that Bruce Lee has in that film.
But when it comes to the sort of specific characteristics of silat...
...especially from Cecep here, the way his eyes are...
...the way his looks are, gestures and mannerisms...
...like, I wish I could take credit for this, but truthfully it all came from him.
So all of those mannerisms, gestures, it was completely undirected.
It was like a joy to see these things come through in the camera...
...and just be sort of taken away by it, which when you consider the fact that...
...Cecep was not like an experienced actor, he's purely a martial arts fighter...
...it's such an incredible thing to kind of have these guys and face off...
...with not just a complex fighting style...
...but also with the charisma involved in terms of the character as well.
So this fight scene, actually, this is a pretty long fight scene.
This is something we spent a hell of a long time sort of designing.
We worked on it for about a month and a half...
...to design the actual movements and get all the structure in there.
The way we would do that, we would go through...
...and create these bite-sized pieces of choreography...
...that the guys would present to me and I would end up going through it...
...saying, "Put this here, put this there."
Like a jigsaw piece. You start stacking everything together...
...and figuring out how the fight is gonna play out.
Once we had that structure sorted and started thinking about different props...
...like I wanted this set in the kitchen--
Like, especially this shot here with this sort of-- Sort of angle...
...a turn of the camera to the work surface.
Something I wanted from the get-go...
...the fact we're gonna set it in the kitchen space.
We could use that metal pang of the work surface in the sound design.
So we would end up going off and doing our video storyboard.
The video storyboard for this one-- This one actually took about...
...probably about a month and a half, on top of that, where we'd shoot each day.
For every single shot-- Every single movement in the choreography...
...we would do about five different alternative angles for it...
...trying to find which one felt like the right one to use.
Before we carry on, a shout-out to Yandi there.
That's our stunt guy filling in for Cecep.
Yandi did all of the glass work.
He doubled for Epy earlier on in the porn den.
That's him again, being kicked out through the window.
And poor Yandi, man. I mean, he took--
Like, even though it's tempered glass and it's made to be...
...safer than real glass, it still cuts.
You still get nicks and marks every now and then.
And on that cut, when he got kicked through the window...
...he had a pretty nasty gash going down the back of his ear.
But he's a trouper and he's one of those guys that's constantly kind of--
Everything we've thrown at him, he's done for us.
So he's an incredible stunt guy.
So I'm gonna give massive props to him here.
So basically after Merantau...
...we had a few people comment, like, about Iko's karambit weapon.
Apologies if I'm repeating myself...
...but we've been recording this commentary through a period of time.
So, yeah, with the karambit, like, everyone wanted to see it in combat.
And I knew I was gonna use it in this film...
...and the tone for this film would allow me to go pretty brutal...
...and aggressive in terms of the use of the knife.
What I love about it...
...and what I loved about using it here in this space is...
...we have a pretty decent sized location. I mean, it's not, like, very claustrophobic.
There's space around.
But the nature of that weapon, because it's a short blade...
...it forces the fighters to be close...
...in order for that weapon to become an impactful weapon.
And so then you end up in this situation...
...where suddenly, even in this space, the fight ends up having the feeling...
...of claustrophobia because they're at each other.
The speed and the use of the weapon is so brutal and so fast...
...but so close, that you lose sight of the fact...
...that, you know, it's such a wide-open space.
And that's, like, attributed to the fact that...
...that weapon is just so short and so brutal.
This is one of my favorite kicks.
That sort of sequence of kicks is one of my favorite things.
And one of the things we tended to do a lot of, it's--
It's kind of like something I've realized now as I kind of make film after film now.
I'm starting to see little sort of recurring shots and little recurring movements.
And one of those things is the idea of using top shots.
I tend to use bird's-eye view shots, especially in fight sequences.
And it helps me be able to--
The reason why I use top shots usually in the fight sequence is, one...
...gives you an opportunity to see the action in full.
At the same time, it allows me to reset my position as well for the next scene.
So-- The next shot. Sorry. So basically you go--
If you're on the right-hand side of someone's shoulder...
...then suddenly you need to go over to the left of somebody else's...
...without breaking the 180 degree rule line...
...I'll throw in a top shot wherever I can to help redress the balance.
So it's kind of a useful tool, while also...
...looking very sort of, like, striking...
...and visually interesting for the fight sequences.
So this sequence here then is where we started..
...to go a bit more crazy now. At the beginning, we structure it...
...in a way where it'd be pure silat and, like, a lot of sort of technique...
...and a lot of crisp choreography which will end up making way...
...into this more brutal state of the choreography...
...where it's much more hack and slash and start to lose focus...
...as they start ripping each other apart.
Earlier I mentioned about our condom technique...
...and this is where it really, really came into play.
So a lot of these shots, a lot of these setups...
...were designed in that way...
...where we could maximize the use of, like, practical blood.
I didn't wanna do much with the CG on this.
There is CG in there...
...but if we added that practical element by having those condom bursts...
...using the string technique that we designed...
...then it would mean that it would kind of...
...make it easier to sort of sell those CG elements as well.
The big benefit of having that practical blood is that it sticks to the clothing.
It sticks to everyone and the floor as well.
So, yeah, the only things like this with the throat...
...those were the kind of elements where we did a lot of CG work on it.
Everything else was kind of real and practical then.
So now we're back into the restaurant and one thing I wanted to play on...
...was this idea that Rama is--
Obviously, he's been through so much now, his body's almost breaking down.
And so when we were doing the choreography for this scene...
...we're shooting this on set, I started telling Iko...
...that every time you do a movement, it's like you're about to lose your balance.
Every time you slash someone, you're falling to the ground.
So it really helped sell that sort of exhaustion of him...
...whereby every slash he does has to be, like, you know...
...strong and powerful.
But then as soon as there's-- As soon as it's over, the release of it...
...is bringing him back down to earth.
It's realizing just how broken his body is at this point.
He no longer is sort of, like, that sort of sharp, focused fighter anymore.
He's lost a lot of blood and he's lost a lot of energy now.
So he is vulnerable at this point...
...which is something that's been an importance to us...
...whenever we make any of these movies.
Quick side point though...
...the glass panels that we shot out earlier...
...all glass panels were done with CG.
We had real glass panels put in there and real squibs put in there...
...but there was a technical issue which made it incredibly dangerous...
...for us to do, so we ended up having to shoot that...
...completely clean with no glass in there, and then later on...
...put in the CG glass elements then for the actual stunt itself.
So here we go. We're coming up to the head shot.
I'll give you a bit of detail on this one.
So for the head shot, what we did in the end...
...was we basically made a replica of Alex's face...
...and we had this camera locked off here.
And so we ended up having to shoot the version first of all with Alex reacting...
...and so you get his arm and his body movement.
And then later on then, we would position the body...
...just the body by itself in the same position as him.
We would do this frame match...
...where we could position the head in exactly the same spot...
...and then we would, like--
We'd put squibs inside his fake head and just blow it up.
But in terms of making sure that the body wouldn't shift or move too much...
...we ended up having to put, like, about maybe six or seven sandbags...
...all over the body of the dummy...
...so that the head wouldn't kind of, like, spring off or go anywhere too far.
It was a combination of that practical element where we would match frame...
...and then also, like, some CGI just to touch it up then.
One of the things that was important to me when it came to this final sequence...
...the sort of-- The killing of Uco.
I didn't want it to feel the same way as any deaths in the film.
I didn't want it to feel like a hero moment for Iko, for Rama even.
And so when it came to, you know, the Assassin fight...
...Baseball Bat, Hammer Girl fight, the way they're structured, they're designed...
...that intensity is designed to make the audience have this visceral reaction to it.
But here, I wanted to play on the sadness of it, the tragedy of it.
And so when we were working on this scene...
...me and Arifin, we were both workshopping how he should respond.
The way we wanted him to respond, the way to convey it was that idea of--
When he gets stabbed, that there's a genuine fear in him.
That there's like a childlike fear in him.
You know, he's terrified of death and he's scared at this point.
And it kind of-- It's--
It's been a tricky thing for us to balance that idea...
...of playing with the audience in terms of how they respond to Uco.
Because, like, deep down, like, you know, he's a product of his father.
He's a product of the society he's been raised in.
And he's kind of like a tragic figure in a way...
...because there's a certain vulnerability to him at times.
But at other times, there's an intense cruelty to him.
There was this thing where I wanted to make it feel conflicted.
So there's not like a celebration of his death.
It's almost like sad. It's almost that thing of...
...what if they had met in other circumstances?
Could they have been friends?
Could they have been like a normal person in society?
And so we wanted to make that final death...
...more emotional and for it to mean more.
So I'm gonna comment now on this piece of music...
...which is "Ghost 13" from the album Ghost by Nine Inch Nails.
I was so fortunate to be able to meet with Trent Reznor...
...and talk about this project and he was a fan of the first film...
...and then the V/H/S/2 short that me and Timo had codirected.
And so I was desperate to use this track.
I really wanted to have this feature in the film.
And in actual fact, this shot here...
...when we were recording this shot-- Doing this take...
...I would listen to the piece of music on my iPhone...
...and listening with my headphones to make sure the timing is right.
I knew at one point I wanted to cut to this shot.
And so it was one of those things when we were making the film...
...I was editing and used the song.
And usually it's like a nightmare when you put in some temp track music...
...to cut a scene because you fall in love with it.
But then when it comes down to clearing rights, you can't actually get it.
But, yeah, very fortunate enough to be able to get Trent...
...to okay us on this and I'm so grateful to him for that...
...because this piece of music for me, it just ties up the whole ending together.
It gives it this sense of this stronger sort of, like, emotional value to it as well.
It was actual a stylistic choice not to have any of the dialogue play out in this scene.
We did shoot it with it...
...and it just felt wrong to kind of incorporate that because it just sort of--
Music was so beautiful, I felt it was getting in the way of it.
It was like-- It was creating these stumbling blocks.
Once you put the audio or the dialogue in, you have to bring the atmosphere in too.
So I just felt it made more sense really to let it hang...
...until those final two words come out from his mouth.
Just for me then, that was the perfect way to kind of end this film then.
-I'm done.
Thank you so much for listening to this audio commentary.
I hope that it's been informative in some way.
I hope I haven't been too repetitive.
Yeah, it's been quite the adventure making this film.
And, you know, we're very appreciative...
...of all the support we've managed to have so far...
...since Merantau through to The Raid 1, and now The Raid 2.
So, yeah, I hope you guys have enjoyed it...
...and I'll see you on the next film. Thank you.