China O'Brien II

China O'Brien (1991) was immediately went into production after the first film. The first on was enjoyable and it was a hoot to see Cynthia Rothrock kick major butt in an English language film. But the sequel was not as good and it's more of the same for Clouse and Company. Robert Clouse at this point in his career was riding high on the success of his greatest film Enter the Dragon. Ever since that film, he's been trying to duplicate the same formula. But like they always say, lightning never strikes twice and Clouse has been trying to recapture the magic.

Rothrock is a phenomenal fighter and performer. This is her show and her fight scenes are a sight to behold. Sadly the rest of the film isn't as fun, the direction plods along and the script is nothing to brag about.

For Rothrock fans only.

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

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!

Although this film is a Golden Harvest co-production, don't expect the fight choreography to be much better than average. For one thing, the villains are not very skillful fighters, and even those few who appear intimidating at first are defeated rather easily (I hate it when that happens). There is still some of the usual good stuff from Richard Norton and Cynthia Rothrock here, but the rapid-fire Keith Cooke easily outshines them both. Biggest disappointment: early on, the movie introduces a super-fit stripper / assassin, and I was hoping for a climactic fight between her and Rothrock; not only does that never happen - she also disappears completely from the film! (**)

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.