Kill'em All 2

I have admired Van Damme since the eighties and even formed a JCVD appreciation society back in college... I'm not gay but his martial arts did inspire us to take it up. Obviously with his advancing years, probably better to have him choreographing behind the camera, but hey ho. From a technical perspective the editing and direction was actually quite sharp for a movie of this budget. Action scenes are tight, well controlled, well lit, and closeup shots are used to avoid too much focus on JC's slowing reflexes. No infamous full split in this movie guys 😂

Storyline has been done many times before, in fact Equaliser 3 most recently comes to mind. This time the hero kicks ass with his daughter assisting and kicking nearly as much ass 😉. Particularly meaningful to me as I saw this on the plane during my first dad daughter trip away. Can definitely imagine me and my daughter taking out the bad guys and killing em all - together.

If you like Van Damm, just watch it for action's sake.

It is seven years after the first movie. Phillip (Jean-Claude Van Damme) and Vanessa (Jacqueline Fernandez) are living out their lives in peace until the brother of the Serbian crime lord comes looking for revenge. Agent Sanders (Maria Conchita Alonso) and Agent Holman (Peter Stormare) are also back.

First, Autumn Reeser is not returning. It's just as well. She could probably use the time to do another Hallmark movie. Without a good twist, this one only has its action to elevate it. The action is fine and going through the narrow European streets is fun. Otherwise, this franchise is out of moves.

I guess All of 'Em weren't killed the first time around after all. Jean-Claude OldMan, his Electra-complex daughter and some simple villagers from the Flemish part of Slovenia team up to take on some Russian mafia ... vampires? Maybe?

JCVD and/or his stuntman still has the chops to sell some of the action and the script isn't entirely formulaic (only mostly formulaic); but this mashup between revenge action and heist movie still feels small, cheap and rushed. There are low stakes and no arcs for the cardboard characters. Peter Stormaire delivers possibly the worst performance of his storied career. Overall this feels like a throwback to mid-1990s straight-to-video content. Unfortunately it's less of a fun, campy throwback and more like something from The Steven Segal Collection gathering cobwebs in a forgotten corner of Blockbuster Video.

Van Damme is not exactly young anymore, so doing big action movies may not be as easy as it once was. His last movie, Darkness of Man, was a slug to watch for me. I think i even watched it in 3 shots because how bored i was. But this one looked like a lot more fun by the trailer. So is it? Lets see.

Kill Em All was a mixed one for me. I was not particulary thrilled by the story and even then, a lot of fast jump cut were used to try to make the fights more entertaining. But at least the movie had action. Overall i still find it surprising they decided to do a sequel to an otherwhise very forgivable movie.

In this one, the story is as basic as you can think of. Brother of the bad guy in first movie want revenge for his brother's death. Where did i seen this before? Taken 2 and a bunch of other action flicks. Still its serviceable enough.

While the plot pretty much only serve to give context to the action, how does the movie fare on that side? Well its decent. There is a decent chuck of it, both hand to hand and with guns. That said, JCVD is not getting younger and at 70 years old can't move like he used to. Therefore a lot of camera tricks are used. Jump cuts, close shots so they can hide the body double, stuff like that. Still you gonna recognize Van Damme doing some of it at least.

This is i think as best as you gonna get for Van Damme at his age when it comes to action and entertainement. Of course this is a direct to VOD movie done with a small budget, so i do think if Van Damme would star in a bigger production, there would still be ways to make a better action movie. But i don't see this happening again. In the context of VOD, this was decent.

Its a movie i would only recommand to fans of JCVD and peoples who watch tons of VOD low budget action flicks like myself. Guys who are fine with smaller budgets and don't expect a John Wick or Nobody type of movie. If you are just a casual movie viewer, you can pass this one.

Sadly I this was not as good as the first and it does not even really flow with the story. The actress that plays his daughter is horrible and made no sense in the store especially since she came out of no wear and does not even look like him, at least get a actress that made sense and she was a horrible at acting. I miss seeing Autumn in this movie. Such a let down with bad back story and little story flow. JCV was great in the movie but that's it. They needed to do better with having the storyline flow together and make sense as the why things are happening this way and what happened to Autumn character. So sad for a part 2.