Gareth Evans revolutionized action cinema with The Raid: Redemption in 2011, but his 2014 sequel, The Raid 2: Berandal , expanded that universe into a sprawling, Shakespearean crime epic. While international audiences often default to English dubs for foreign cinema, watching The Raid 2 with its original Indonesian audio track is not just a preference—it is essential to understanding the film’s narrative depth, cultural weight, and sonic design. The Auditory Architecture of Indonesian Martial Arts
Watching The Raid 2 with its original Indonesian audio is the only way to experience this masterpiece of martial arts cinema. While the English dub exists, it often strips away the raw, percussive intensity of the dialogue that Gareth Evans intended.
In contrast to the street thugs, crime bosses like Bangun (Tio Pakusadewo) speak a refined, calculated form of Indonesian. The deliberate pacing, low pitch, and cold precision of his voice command authority. The vocal performance delivers subtextual threats that a voice actor in a studio thousands of miles away simply cannot replicate. The Indonesian-Japanese Linguistic Barrier The Raid 2 Indonesian Audio
Dubbing replaces the entire dialogue track. This process often dampens the ambient background noise. The native Indonesian track preserves the rich environment, from rain-slicked streets to echoing prison blocks. The Original Score
The film takes place in the gritty underbelly of Jakarta. Characters use specific Indonesian dialects and slang. The native audio captures the true tension of these criminal hierarchies. Nuance in Performance Gareth Evans revolutionized action cinema with The Raid:
First and foremost, the Indonesian language provides an irreplaceable layer of cultural and geographical authenticity. The film is a sprawling neo-noir crime epic set in the underbelly of Jakarta—a humid, claustrophobic labyrinth of nightclubs, prisons, and muddy construction sites. The Bahasa Indonesia spoken by characters like the stoic Rama (Iko Uwais), the ambitious Uco (Arifin Putra), and the psychotic assassin Prakoso (Yayan Ruhian) is saturated with specific social hierarchies. The use of formal versus informal address, the subtle shifts in tone between a boss and his underling, and the raw, guttural nature of street slang cannot be translated without loss. An English dub replaces these nuanced cultural signifiers with generic American or British inflections, stripping the characters of their geographical identity. When Rama speaks, we are meant to hear a man of few words from a specific place, not a universal action hero. The Indonesian audio roots the hyper-stylized violence in a recognizable reality, making the carnage feel immediate and dangerous rather than cartoonish.
Bejo, a rising, ruthless gangster who manipulates Uco's ambition to spark a war between the families. The Climax While the English dub exists, it often strips
The Raid 2 shifts focus from pure survival to the complex hierarchy of the Jakarta underworld. The plot weaves through Indonesian crime syndicates and Japanese Yakuza factions. In this multicultural criminal ecosystem, language is a weapon and a shield.
The English dub can sometimes feel "cartoonish" or mismatched with the gritty, operatic tone of the sequel. Cultural Context:
The biggest objection to the Indonesian audio is subtitles. "I want to watch the fights, not read," is a common refrain. However, The Raid 2 is not a dialogue-heavy film like My Dinner with Andre . Most of the critical story beats are visual. The subtitles are minimal and appear mostly during the 10-15 minutes of exposition in the middle act.