Bloodsport II (1996)

There are some movies that you actually are supposed to hate. Kind of like a dish that isn't good for you or doing a small bit of gambling, you know you aren't supposed to enjoy it because it's wrong. But hey, we all have vices, right? Bloodsport 2 is one of those movies for me.The premise of the movie is pretty simple. An arrogant thief named Alex Cardo, played by Daniel Bernhardt, gets caught by the police after being setup by his partner. It turns out that Cardo is already a good martial artist, but when he goes to jail, he meets a person with even "stronger kung fu", named Sun (James Hong). The rest is pretty straight forward from there. A reformed criminal seeks redemption, a student learns the Ultimate Technique from his master. Said reformed jailbird/student enters to the Ultimate Death Match tournament to honor his master and gain back his honor. Along the way, we get a lot of new faces (and some old ones as well if you've seen the first movie), a ton of fights, some big bad evil former student, and some pathetic facsimile of a romance happen.Probably the strongest point of this film is the fight choreography and action sequences. I actually believe that when they were brainstorming this film, they decided to make a tournament fighter featuring different styles of martial arts. But they needed something to try and ensure some modicum of notoriety, so they tied it into the languishing franchise of "Bloodsport" (thanks for Dux getting tacitly outed as a fraud), picked up the services of Pat Murita, and called it good.But back to the point, you see a ton of different styles in this film and nearly all the fights are very well done. Bernhardt does a reasonable job as a Van Damme-clone (despite being his first film) and special mention go to Ron Hall and Ong Soo Han for their roles in this film as well. Gibb reprises his role as Ray Jackson as well, but it's more for comedic effect. That said, he does a fine job hamming it up.Otherwise, there isn't anything wrong with the technical aspects of production. The story has a ton of clichés, some of the dialogue is downright awful ("You are a true warrior, Alex" is one of the single most out of place lines of all time. It's the Bloodrayne sex scene of dialogue, but without Loken's umm... assets). The romance sub-plot is outright horrible and seemed like it was forced in as an afterthought for the purposes of trying to mirror the success of the original film as much as possible. The musical score isn't anything fantastic, but they at least made the pieces "fit" as best as possible and a few of the tunes are catchy. Some of the segments of the film are legitimately funny (as intended) and provide a welcome relief from the boring secondary plot elements.On the whole, there isn't much to the film other than the fight sequences. It does take some time to get to what we all want to see. It's worth the wait (or just the use of the fast forward feature on your DVD or other methods of delivery). If you enjoyed the first film, are a fan of tournament fighting movies, or are a fan of Bernhardt or Donald Gibb, you'll enjoy it. Otherwise, you might be best passing on this.

The first 30 minutes of "Bloodsport II" are just plain ridiculous: a sort of "Karate Kid (or is it Karate Grownup?) In Prison", with a cut-rate Olivier Gruner (who is, in turn, a cut-rate Van Damme!) as the student and a cut-rate Miyagi as his teacher (actually, the real Miyagi, Pat Morita, is also in the cast!). Daniel Bernhardt shows little screen presence here, but it's his acting debut, so I guess he can be forgiven. But when the movie starts concentrating on the fighting it becomes quite good, with enough variety of styles among the different tournament participants to keep things interesting (there are even some submission victories, somewhat rare for this type of movie). Fighting female fans should note the presence of Lisa McCullough as the only woman fighter on board; she definitely knows her stuff. (**1/2)

Hello again fight fans and get ready for another dose of DANIEL MANIA!!!Well besides the first movie, this was the best tournament movie ever. There were plenty of fights, more than the first one, and the story was great not to mention the villian. Oong Soo Han was the absolute best Bloodsport villian ever. He was ruthless and nearly unstoppable. This movie also had more variety in it's combatants, not to mention the great choreography. This movie also had something no other tournament movie ever had and that was the fact that nothing interfered with the final battle. In most movies like this true fans are often let down when the movie has gone well and the director decides to confict some other event in the movie with the final battle. Trust me many great tournament movies have often been ruined by such stupid ideas. But thank god that the director of this movie had more sense than many others who would have ruined this masterpiece. I mean the final battle in this film went as smooth as a Rocky fight!! So all in all I give this a 10/10 and believe me it definitely earned every point!!!Be sure to keep your eyes open for my next DANIEL MANIA comment of the day!!!!Film Suggestions for DANIEL MANIA! tournament moviesBloodsport, The Quest, The Quick and the Dead, Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV, Enter the Dragon, 8 Mile, Mortal Kombat, Bloodsport 3, Game of Death, Grappler Baki.

This is a film with more of the same, the story seems to be used for many other films of this kind. The fighting scenes are not bad, on a scale from 1 to 10, I rate it a 5.