Netflix Just Added One of the Best Action Movies of the Past Decade

A slew of new content has been added to Netflix to kickstart a new month but among the titles they’ve added is one of the best action films of the past decade, The Raid 2. The 2014 Indonesian action thriller film, a sequel to 2011’s breakout The Raid: Redemption, is now available for streaming on the service, and while it’s worth seeking out its predecessor, those eager for a great time (albeit a very violent one) would do good to seek it out. Some other notable movies that Netflix has added this week include Tom Cruise’s Minority Report, the classic musical Grease, the first five films in the Rocky franchise, the fan-favorite Edgar Wright movie Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, and the classic action film Top Gun.

Written, directed and edited by Gareth Evans, The Raid 2 picks up minutes after the conclusion of the first film, featuring Iko Uwais (Snake Eyes, The Night Comes For Us) reprising his role of police officer Rama. Fresh off his exhausting battle up a skyscraper, fighting off a drug cartel and rescuing his brother, Rama is given a new assignment, going undercover in the world of the Jakarta underworld to expose corruption between the gangs and the police. He encounters a variety of colorful characters in this journey, and does a lot of damage along the way. Check out the trailer here and stream it on Netflix now.

Will there be a The Raid 3?

Despite critical and commercial success of the first two movies in the series it seems unlikely that fans will ever get to see The Raid 3. That’s the bad news, the good news is that Gareth Evans has already revealed what the plot for the theoretical sequel would have been. In short The Raid 3 would have moved its main action and even followed a totally different character.

Speaking on the Empire Spoiler Special Podcast Evans revealed the film would stray from the series’ roots by removing itself from the city and taking off to the jungles of West Java, in what the director said would have been like the original Predator in a way. The Japanese mob boss would reunite with a former associate boss in the jungle where they’d find the city-dwelling kill squad out of their element.

Evans went on to acknowledge that his ideas for the movie may not have been what fans were expecting, saying “it would have pissed off an awful lot of people” and that fans knowing his plans for the film now will likely not ask him to make it.

“Before I knew it, I was five years down the line, I’d made Apostle, we were starting to get production going on Gangs Of London. I couldn’t see myself going back out to make The Raid 3. My interests had moved on to other projects,” Evans concluded. “You work with other people, you meet other people and want to work with them again, you want to try different things, you find a story that suddenly captures your attention and that’s the thing you want to do next. Things get offered to you that are hard to pass up on.”