Runtime:
95 minutes
Directed
by: Neveldine/Taylor
Starring:
Jason Statham, Amy Smart, Clifton Collins, Jr., David Carradine
From:
Lionsgate
Here
is a movie I saw back in '09 on the big screen but hadn't seen since
then until last night. I watched it on Blu-Ray; as both this and the
first one were shot digitally, they look great in that format. Back
in '09 I saw the first film shortly before seeing the sequel. I
wasn't sure what I'd think about viewing the movies a few days apart.
The
plot is not exactly complex: Chev Chelios' tremendous heart literally
gets stolen from him and replaced by an artificial one, which
requires electricity to keep on ticking. Chev is pissed so he goes on
a hunt from it, and not only deals with the Chinese guy who stole it
(David Carradine!) but also a gang of Mexicans who are after him for
a personal reason.
Of
course, the film is largely the same as the first one. It's so
fast-paced, it's slickly done and stylized, the music is in your
face, and so on and so forth. There definitely are entertaining and
fun moments. And yet at various times I cringed and just got tired of
it. You know, they certainly tried to top the the first movie and
there's a lot of zaniness; one scene having Chelios and his rival
giant-sized and fighting as if they were Godzilla vs. say, Megalon
was bizarre but also funny. Other times, though, the drive to be even
more insane than a crazy film started to wear thin on me. It was
chaotic at times and not in a good way. It seemed to end out of
nowhere.
And
the vulgarity and all the cursing sometimes got on my nerves. This
release needed an option like the release of the first movie where on
the DVD/Blu-Ray there's an option to watch it with all the
cursing/dirty phrases removed and replaced with something cleaner;
for example, “mother freaker” and “mickie frickies”. I think
I needed that. If only there was an option to remove all the racism
against the Chinese. Bai Ling's entire character and how she acted...
a big turn-off in general, along with most of the other Asian
characters you see. Bizarrely, Carradine's too small role did not
offend me too much aside from the fact that he played a sterotypical
guy from East Asia and had the trying way too hard name of Poon Dong.
It's
odd, when I first saw it a few years ago I thought I enjoyed it
well-enough. Viewing it again left me with more mixed feelings, and
that is a surprise to me.
I'll
be back Friday night.
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