Lethal Dragon

First things first: despite what the DVD cover implies, and the fact that there are no less than five (!) women who have moments of action here, "Lethal Panther 2" is NOT really a girls-with-guns film, as the focus of the "plot" is primarily on the male lead. The movie does deliver plenty of action, but it's often hard-to-follow due to the choppy, disjointed editing. And there is also an overuse of wires in the fights and stunts, which obscures the true skills of the cast. It's a pity, too, because when Yukari Oshima is grounded you can easily see that apart from being a beautiful woman, she is also an amazingly fast and coordinated fighter. Still, action is action, and the film delivers enough of it to be watchable. (**)

All they had to do was stick to the premise of the first movie: beautiful Asian female assassin faces off against hard-boiled female cop. Not difficult. In this one, the female fighters were background characters with little screen time, while most of the movie centered around typical mocho male cop I couldn't give a rat's ass about.

The movie got weird around the middle as if the writers forgot what they were doing and winged it. Yet Lethal Panthers 1 was still much better than this sequel failure.

Gangsters kill a police investigator's wife, his partner and his mother. Hardly surprising, he gets quite angry and wants to kill all the gangsters now. Doesn't exactly sound innovative, but it's a tight, action-packed movie that fortunately wasn't cut as much as others (8 minutes) when broadcast on TV recently.

The fights are supposed to be tough and realistic, but in several scenes, obvious wire tricks were employed, that's a bit inconsistent. In the funeral scene, you'll recognize Morricone's famous theme from `Once Upon A Time In the West' on the soundtrack. Voted 5/10.

Set in the Philipines, Lethal Panther 2 is a dreary early-90s martial-arts action flick which sees a reckless cop hunting down the nasty criminals who killed his wife. A rather cheap looking production with almost no artistic merit, this film relies on the quality and quantity of its action. But whilst there is no shortage of fisticuffs, gun fights and explosions, the quality is just not there. The endless battles are desperately lacking in originality or excitement, with poor editing and mundane direction making this film a real chore to sit through.

The usually impressive Yukari Oshima is totally wasted, with her natural athletic ability overshadowed by some excruciatingly bad wire-work. The ballistic action scenes are an unimpressive mixture of 'slow-motion flying-through-the-air-whilst-shooting' heroics, crazy vehicle stunts, and endless bad guys lining up to be shot.

With so many better examples of the 'girls and guns' genre now available on DVD, I suggest that you leave this one well alone (unless, like me, you'll endure pretty much any old rubbish in order to be a completist).

I am an English speaking American. That said, I saw this movie on the Spanish channel instead of watching the 2007 Oscars. It was horribly dubbed and the editing was hilariously cheesy. I am serious when I claim that this is one of the best times I have had watching a TV movie. My favorite scene- the parking garage, the bad guy (we know this b/c he's in black and wears boots with spurs for some reason) kills one of the good guys with a silenced pistol and then tries to kill 2 innocent onlooking screaming girls to eliminate witnesses. He gets one in the head but the other escapes. Finally, after a steady 10 minutes of ACTION!!!, the scene ends when the bad guy shoots a rocket behind him while riding on a stolen motorcycle into speeding highway traffic and the hero falls off his stolen motorcycle after making it through the fiery inferno blast. The cops help him up and don't question a thing. They just stare at the villain escaping.

It was amazing on all levels!

Thank You for making my week.