Shootfighter II

A bad bad movie... terrible plot, hinges on Bolo Yeung's charater, but he speaks maybe 20 words in the entire movie and only has one fight scene - still in great shape considering he was also in the kung fu classic "Enter The Dragon" Interesting to see William Zabka ("Johnny" from The Karate Kid) in another martial-arts role.

Shootfighter 2 is better than the first movie. This is mainly because of the fight scenes, who are pretty good. They're nowhere near as brutal as the scenes in the first movie were, but they're in fact better all the way through. Also, it's more focus on Bolo Yeung in this movie than in the previous. He still isn't the lead, but I really liked his performance in this one. Of course, this is not an A-grade movie and it has it's unintentionally funny situations. Some of the fights (and fighters) are for example just comical, but that's just a proof that the movie doesn't take itself that seriously. A good and entertaining movie.

Now, this is my kind of movie, 80's/90's cheesey martial arts film with not very good acting, bad lines but some decent fight scenes.

I won't go too much into the story (revenge etc etc) to avoid spoilers.

I love films like King of the kickboxers, shootfighter 1, China o Brien etc so I know what I'm getting heading into this sort of movie.

The first issue as stated by others is the lack of blood, the first movie was decent with the amount of blood and gore etc

The second issue and by far and away the worst for me is Joe Son, from what I hear he's not a nice guy for real but he is a terrible actor and I absolutely despised him, needed something more along the lines of Tong Po to add a bit of fear but this Son guy was just a joke.

After seeing Shootfighter 1, and the buckets of blood they shed, I was ready for another rousing jaunt of open handed heart massage, and chiropractics in a cage. But nooooooo, this was like the Barney version of the first movie, with that lamer from the Karate kid. At least Bolo Yeung still kicks booty, although he needs to do more movies like Bloodsport and Caddyshack.

Well, if you have seen the 1993 movie "Shootfighter: Fight to the Death", then you have essentially also already seen the 1996 sequel "Shootfighter II", because they were one and the same movie. Yup, that was the extend of what writers Greg Mellott and Peter Shaner mustered to do here, just tweaked the setting a bit, but the storyline was basically the same.

So the writing in "Shootfighter II" was lazy, really lazy. And that makes "Shootfighter II" a somewhat dull movie experience in comparison to the 1993 original movie. Sure, "Shootfighter II" was watchable, and especially so if you haven't seen the 1993 predecessor.

"Shootfighter II" sees Bolo Yeung, William Zabka and Michael Bernardo return to reprise their characters and roles from the first movie, and that was one of the reasons why "Shootfighter II" was bearable to sit through. And this 1996 sequel also sees Brett Baxter Clark added to the roster, as well as Marc Macaulay, so there are some familiar faces on the cast list.

The movie, however, had Joe Son playing Lance Stuart, the main villain in the movie. I am not familiar with Joe Son, but talk about a miscast actor for the main bad guy. He was not able to portray a serious character, much less be taken seriously as a villain, so that took away a lot from the movie.

There were some good enough fight scenes throughout the course of the 91 minutes that the movie ran for, and they definitely helped make the movie all the more watchable, no doubt about it. And when you sit down to watch a movie such as "Shootfighter II", then it is for the martial arts and the fighting, not for the acting performances.

The 1996 movie "Shootfighter II" is nowhere near as enjoyable as the 1993 movie, especially not if you have seen the 1993 movie. And I did watch them back to back.

My rating of "Shootfighter II" lands on a mediocre five out of ten stars.