Shadow Warriors II: Hunt for the Death Merchant

To sum everything up: the inexplicably popular Hulk Hogan, washed-up can't-believe-it's-not-porno star Shannon Tweed, Apollo Creed, the cop from "Last House" (who was cool before I saw this) and some other guy who is cleaning up vomit at Wal-Mart while you read this shoot for hours and hours and hours from open spaces without getting a scratch. Usually writers try to make it remotely believable by having one guy shot in the arm or something like that but no, none of that for the indestructible Hulk Hogan. There's just something bothering me about Hulk Hogan being surrounded by twenty guys and just shooting them one by one with his painfully slow moves. It's a way-too-common trend in action flicks that villains with machine guns who are off-screen immediately stop existing. At least Seagal hides behind a crate or something. It's also pretty hilarious how none of the people who get shot appear to bleed, they just fall down. It looks like a bunch of kids playing cowboy and Indian. For people who think wrestling(which in Hogan's case, is not a lot more than soft punching) is real.

This is the first movie I saw starring Hulk Hogan. This guy really can't act at all. Add up the utterly stupid plot, conversations and action scenes and you get a helluva movie.

This piece of crap starts with a kidnapping of a girl. Hulk Hogan, here his name is Mike McBride (haha), and his moron friends are assigned to save the day. And in what manner: they go to the house of the kidnapper, who is the father of the girl, and shoot everyone and everything. Once they accomplished this mission something completely different happens. Hulk Hogan is captured by some villain who injects him with a poison that will slowly kill him within 24hours. Look at Hogan's face as he tries to act like he's really going to die. It's painfully funny. After he gets injected with the poison his friends pop up completely out of nowhere shooting all the bad guys, which of course are not American. Shannon Tweed, the "femme fatale" jumps over a sand dune on a motorcycle while killing the baddies. And so it goes on and on. Amazingly brainless and cliché action scenes followed by amazingly brainless and cliché conversations. At one point Hulk is even trying to be emotional, thinking of his "pals" who died in earlier operations. You get to see some idiotic flashbacks of dying soldiers. Then Shannon Tweed comes in to comfort him...hahahaha...this is some really bad acting.

The bad guy is so tremendously evil it becomes a joke. Everything he says, does and thinks is pure evil. And of course he's Russian, what else... His sidekick is even worse. Some kinda gorilla-a-like monster who does everything 'the boss' says. Of course, further on in the movie Hulkie and this mean machine get in a nasty fight with each other.

In the end, after a lot of dim-witted, extremely unbelievable action scenes and other crap, you see Hulk Hogan and his moron crew (one character is called Andy Powers btw, djeezes), walking side by side, way too cool, with in the background a big explosion. Hellooo....... Oh, I almost forgot the hilarious scene with the brainsick madman in the helicopter going completely nuts throwing grenates at the 'bad people'like he's Santa handing out candy to children. Luckely, every grenate takes out a couple of baddies, thrown away in a real old-school McGyverisch style.

Everything about this movie is so crappy and pointless...You can't do otherwise than laugh about it. I hope to see other rubbish starring Hulkie, coz he's so incredibly funny. They should make a movie just with Hogan's face and a spin-off starring his mustache.

Mike and his team of shadow warriors are working freelance on military operations. When Mike thinks he recognises a biochemical terrorist from his past they uncover a plot to attack Seattle. With Mike drugged with a slow poison that only terrorist Sarkisian can stop the team go out to stop the attack.

This is the second of the Shadow Warrior films and it's much worse that the first (I didn't think it was possible!). The plot is lazy - the first third about a kidnapped girl almost feels like it's just filling in the time until they get to the terrorists bit. The attempts to give Mike a past to create new action is stupid - he recognises the terrorist despite the complete plastic surgery! However the plot doesn't matter in this type of thing right? It's all about the action yeah? Face/Off had a really stretched plot but the action was amazing. Here the action is terrible - really terrible. The Shadow Warriors attack camps with typical American macho-isms - riding round on bikes and cars firing wildly. The final battle is the worst, baddies fire automatics constantly without hitting anyone but are easily taken out with one shot from the warriors. The most laughable bit is seeing Andy flying a helicopter above the action, picking people off with weapons including pistols, grenades, automatics and a rocket launcher - yes you read it right - he looks to all the world like someone leaning out the side of his friends parked car. When we watched it we were roaring with laughter all the way through it.

The acting barely matters but suffice to say it's terrible. All the Shadow Warriors are macho with a real buddy sense of humour. Hulk Hogan is terrible - the worst bit (and there's plenty) is the second half when he is poisoned and has to `look in pain' for the rest of the film - he does it by furrowing his brow and staring into the distance, it's really funny. Shannon Tweed is OK, Carl Weathers is OK but neither can do anything with the material. The only good role is Kove as Andy because his manic stuff is funny - but even his stuff gets boring and eventually you realise that he ISN'T playing it with his tongue in his cheek! The main problem with the cast is that the Shadow unit are all American caricatures who are almost invincible. However the main terrorist is English and the majority of the bad guys are foreign - even the terrorist attack is launched from Canada! This feel-good flag waving is quite tasteless to watch. I know that things like Die Hard had European terrorists etc but the way that this shows the US force as invincible moral men & women but shows the rest as stupid, cowardly and weak is insulting and lazy writing.

Overall - cheap and nasty - only enteraining because it's so stupid.

I wasn't sure what to exspect from this movie, but I like Navy SEALs. Hogan impressed me with this role. All this movie needed was a little tweeking to make it a kick ass flick. Some of the scenes were a little much. Example: Hogan attacking a terrorist camp alone with a gun in each hand. They needed to get Richard Marcinko the "Rogue Warrior" to be tech adviser. Hogan's character seems to want to be like Marcinko but just can't make it. However I did like this flick and would like to find the first movie to compare them. It was a worth while rental.

The only point of interest in this film, for me at least, was the presence of Shannon Tweed. Aging like fine wine and kicking a$$ with grace, she proves once again that she had definite "action heroine" potential that could have taken her career in a totally different path, if she had chosen to go that way. Carl Weathers also emerges with his dignity intact. But what else is there for us to see? Hulk Hogan "haunted" by flashbacks of his traumatic past, in a role way beyond his reach? The heroes never getting shot in the gunfights despite the fact that they rarely bother to take cover? The all-American nut Martin Kove yelling "Yi-Ha!" while mowing down dozens of evil Arabs? Um, no thank you, I'll take Tweed. Too bad she's too old now to make another action movie. (**)