China O'Brien 2: Quanto Mais Quente Melhor

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! (**)

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!

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.

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.

Same thing I've said for China O'Brien applies to China O'Brien 2. They should have hired the guy who did the choreography for "Inspector Wears Skirts" for this movie, and upped the action to that level.

Made by Golden Harvest, and produced, and directed by American producer and director, China O'Brien was in the perfect spot to take advantage of best from both worlds. Unfortunately, Raymond Chow probably didn't want to put in the budget to make this into a first class movie.

It could have been like "So Close" if China O'Brien character was bit more edgier, but this is a product of the '80s, so edginess was not part of movie making. She kind of looks too wholesome that takes away from her sex appeal, and also lowers the tension of the movie.

The producers failed to produce Cynthia Rothrock properly. She could have done lot better in these movies.