Don “The Dragon” Wilson (World Kickboxing Association Light Heavyweight World Champion) returns as kickboxing champion Jake Raye in the only Bloodfist sequel that’s marginally related to the first movie. This time out, instead of going to Manila to avenge his brother’s death, he goes to Manila to help out his former trainer, who is in deep to some unsavory underworld types.
While Wilson plays the same character that he did in the first movie, the screenwriters seem to have forgotten a lot of his backstory. In the original, he gave up professional kickboxing because he donated a kidney to his brother (Ned Hourani). The opening scene of this one finds him in the ring defending his belt. (I guess it’s kind of like the Rocky 3 thing where they completely ignored the fact that Rocky nearly went blind in the previous installment.) This time out, he gives up kickboxing when he accidentally kills his opponent (who wears a hilarious pair of trunks that say “Kick Boxing” across the crotch) during the bout. The weird thing about this scene: Ned Hourani plays the guy he kills in the ring! I don’t know if they were trying to make this sort of like a psychological thing where Wilson projects the image of his dead brother onto the guy he accidentally murdered or if the filmmakers just plain forgot Hourani played his brother in the last flick, but it’s pretty funny.
After quitting the sport for good, Jake spends most of his time banging hookers, which seems like a pretty sweet deal until his trainer calls and beckons him to Manila. Once there, bad guys that look like rejects from a Death Wish movie crawl out of the woodwork to kill him. Seriously, the first act of the movie is nearly non-stop action.
Once the greasy, sweaty, obnoxious German henchman (Robert Marius) shows up, the movie sort of takes its foot off the accelerator. It’s here where Jake gets shanghaied by some goons and taken to an island to participate in a to-the-death fighting tournament ran by a villain (played by Joe Mari Avellana, the villain from the first movie) who enhances his fighters using experimental steroids. It’s not as crazy as it sounds, but at least the steroids angle allows Wilson the opportunity to deliver the film’s best line when he tells his opponent, “When you fight on drugs, you don’t win anything!”
Overall, Bloodfist 2 is slightly better than the first one. It’s fun for the first half-hour or so. Once the action switches over to the island, it kind of loses some steam. The fight scenes are better than the original, but they’re still nothing to write home about. There are plenty of them, so there’s that. However, they do get a tad repetitive (with the notable exception of the fight where the one guy sits on the mat mediating the whole time, which flummoxes his roid rage opponent).
I know in my Bloodfist review I made a big deal about calling Don “The Dragon” Wilson by his kickboxing title that appeared alongside his name in the opening credits. What I liked about Bloodfist 2 is that the villain shows Don the same respect. When the baddie meets his character in this one, he says, “Jake Raye… World Light Heavyweight Kickboxing Champion!” Folks, this movie may not be great, but this moment made me pump my (blood)fist in the air and say, “YES!”
No comments:
Post a Comment