China O'Brien II

Its one of those movies that entices you in with the poster but after watching you realise you were duped! The poster gives the impression that Cynthia has a one on one showdown with a dangerous male martial arts expert opponent. However she is actually up against a late middle aged to elderly escaped convict wearing women's jeans and what appear to be women's boots?

In the follow up to China 1, a dangerous convict has escaped and is heading to confront an ex gang member who has made off with 5 million bucks, in the town Cynthia is now the Sheriff of. This is a slightly more convoluted plot than the average revenge movie, but its the usual "find reasons to kick men" fare. The first movie must have been a success for there to be a follow up, however this really plays out like an episode of Walker Texas Ranger. Why are so many of these movies filmed in the middle of nowhere? Cheap option?

This is really on a par with the first movie, it has most of the same leads, including the Dakota character who simply looks for opportunities to karate people for the slightest reason, but is meant to be a deputy. There are the obvious goofs to be seen during the action, men in wigs standing in for Cynthia when the stunts required too much upper body strength. There is an Oddjob type character who seems to have stolen the claws from the set of Enter The Dragon and some odd choices in death scenes. The strangest one being a woman who is shot that we never see getting shot.

This is average at best Rothrock so if that's your thing this is for you.

I noticed that she is back working, however I am not sure how successful she will be, based on her age and even the male action stars are struggling these days. I do wish her all the best however.

My review was written in August 1992 after watching the movie on Imperial video cassette.

Made in 1989, this Cynthia Rothrock vehicle is a haphazard affari, generating little interest in her ongoing exploits as femme sheriff of a small American town.

Nemesis this time is Harlow Marks, a bitter drug lord who's just escaped from prison. He's mad at Rothrock, and she's dead set on recapturing him.

Rothrock and her pals Richard Norton and Keith Cooke demonstrate their high-kicking ability in several fight scenes, but the film's storyline is perfunctory. Wrap-up is rapid and arbitrary.

Rothrock, poised for a network TV series, is still green in the acting department here, while co-star Norton's role is severely underwritten; he merely pops up out of nowhere when a fight is imminent.

Pic is from the same team that made Bruce Lee's "Enter the Dragon" 17 years earlier, but they didn't try very hard this time.

China O' Brien II picks up where the first film left off, and it's almost literally more of the same. This means TV movie quality plot interspersed with some great martial arts action.

As a film, it's certainly not the worst ever made. It's about as solidly entertaining as any episode of Columbo or Walker Texas Ranger, and really no worse than any other martial arts flick. As with the first one, where the film excels is the fight scenes, which are dynamic and very well choreographed, with some brilliant OTT sound effects.

The film's plot centres around some bog standard pap about an escaped convict terrorising the town, and in that it makes some mistakes. As with the first film, the main bad guy is an older dude with no fighting skills whatsoever, and so there is really no final threat or showdown. Just a big free for all brawl involving loads of people.

It would have been nice to have China go up against another female martial arts villain as the main baddie, but we are talking early 90s here.

Where the film excels other than the fights is its lead character. The appeal of China O'Brien is her wholesomeness, which juxtaposes her fighting skill very well. There's no need to rely on blatant sex appeal, nudity, or an "edgy" persona, and the film does a very good job of showing that you can be tough, but still be a nice person - an important and very good role model.

Also, watching China beat the s-h-i-t out of endless waves of plaid shirted goons is infinitely satisfying.

While it starts ok, the film has some issues in the second half. A lot of the action scenes feel very cobbled together, and while the choreography is still great, the fights end all too soon - most notably the Keith Cooke/Billy Blanks duel, and the fight with the clawed henchmen played my Toshiro Obata of Turtles fame (why wasn't he the main villain?). They feel like runtime extenders which were shot post production, and they're just not long enough.

Still, as thin as the plot is, it's executed well enough to keep the pace going, and fans won't be disappointed by the highly satisfying action one bit.

One for the collection!

International female Karate sensation Cynthia Rothrock has never made a perfect movie in her 20+ years as a high-kicking, "B"-movie martial arts maverick. In all likelihood, especially now in today's time, it doesn't seem like she'll ever make a "perfect movie." Of course, for the longest time she was probably the most well-known female American martial arts champion to make a name for herself in the movies. "China O'Brien II" is a sequel to the 1990 first film, and has Rothrock returning as the title character, the sheriff of a small Midwestern town who has to deal with an escaped convict who has ridden into town and puts a price on her head when she foils his latest drug scheme. Together with a fellow Karate champ (Richard Norton) and an Indian biker ("Reptile" Keith Cooke), they set about making sure the bad guys get the proper punishment. "China O'Brien II" has three things going for it that really make it even worth viewing as a rental: Rothrock, director Robert Clouse, and producer Raymond Chow; the names Robert Clouse and Raymond Chow should be ringing bells because they collaborated in 1973 on the greatest martial arts movie ever made, "Enter the Dragon," which starred the late, great martial artist to top them all off, Bruce Lee. With such a collaboration behind "China O'Brien II," you wouldn't expect cinematic gold like "Enter the Dragon," but you would expect something better than what we get here. Rothrock is not a particularly good actress (and neither are many of the other performers, I'm sorry), but I guess her biggest saving grace are her phenomenal fighting skills, and that is when she (and the film as a whole) is at her best. With such strong talent involved in the production of this film, "China O'Brien II" probably would not have become a classic, but it could have been something much more memorable.

3/10

This time China O'Brien has trouble with a dealer who puts a prize on her head because she had spoiled an important drug deal of his. But all the world's criminals will not be enough to ... She's back... and deadlier than ever.

A bit slow to get moving due to the set up, but at around the third act the sequel of China O'Brien gets moving with some spinning kicks which our trio ( Rothrock, Norton and Cooke) hand out with unrestrained relish. It's not as good the first film, the story not as engaging, however it's a joy to see some straightforward martial arts, blocks, strikes and locks. I especially am impressed by Keith Cooke, who clad in leather jacket, channels Bruce Lee but with more leg action. Boy is he nimble and fast. Pity he didn't have a film career of his own, he got the moves. All in all, China O'Brien is a standard yet satisfying sequel.