The Raid 2 director: why Hollywood action films are lazy

Gareth Evans, the Welsh director of the highly-anticipated martial arts film ‘The Raid 2’, blames poor film-making techniques in Hollywood for the lack of hard-hitting action films on the market nowadays.

His film which hits cinemas this Friday has been lauded as “The greatest action film ever” on its poster, so we had to ask him what sets his films apart from Hollywood’s offerings.

[Watch: 'The Raid 2' brutal car fight clip]

“It’s not that we’re doing anything innovative or new, we’re just taking a step back,” explains Evans in our video above, “We’re going back to that old style action cinema like [Sam] Peckinpah and John Woo, and looking at how they shot action and how they presented it.”

“It’s that idea of being wide enough to get a bit of detail, wide enough to get a bit of clarity, and understanding where the surroundings are in a scene.”

‘The Raid 2’ offers some of the most hard-hitting fight scenes you’re likely to have seen in a long time, and Evans says that comes from being unflinching in the edit suite.

“Nowadays, a lot of modern action films tend to hide that a lot,” he says, "They tend to go for really tight close-ups and shake the camera around, and then fill it with sound effects.

[Watch Orlando Bloom rehearse his 'Hobbit' fight scenes]

“Sometimes [they do that] to water it down for a PG-13 [rating], but sometimes it’s just out of laziness, because it’s just padding out. That’s a pad out shot.

“The stunt guys are working to make sure they’re risking their lives for the entertainment of the film, and it just gets lost by a zoomed in shaky cam, or a confused editor.”

‘The Raid 2’ is in cinemas from 11 April, 2014.