Shootfighter II (1996)

"Shootfighter II" is just as good as the first one.Shingo and the gang are back for more of the World's deadliest sport: (Which is Shootfighting, duh.)When the movie opens, we see some familiar pants. You've heard of "Blockbuster Pants", Now there are Shootfighting pants. As you remember from the first movie, they are black sweatpants with big pink patches. The man wearing the pants is running from the new shootfighting ringleader in Florida, Lance. He is an ambitious and deadly man.Cut to a James Brolin doppelganger, a cop named Rawlins (Chase Randolf) asking the question "Do you know anything about a shootfighting ring in Miami?" to Nick, Ruben and Shingo. Rawlins wants to go undercover and bust the new shootfighting ring because his son died in it. Rawlins also recruits a dock workin' badass named Shark who resembles a lost Swayze brother. An uneasy alliance is forged between Nick, Ruben, and Shark.Nowhere is this tension better exemplified than in the scene where Ruben notices Shark's tattoo. Ruben glibly notes that it looks "Like a tuna fish to me. " whereupon Shark delivers the immortal line (groan) "It's a shark, buttwipe" (groan again) also groan-worthy is Shark's inexplicable nicknaming Ruben "Waterboy" for the rest of the movie.The new gang enters Lance's strongman competition where it eventually leads to an underground shootfighting match. They fight baddies such as a black guy who looks like "Dee Jay" from the then current game "Street Fighter", A guy who eats raw meat, and Sargon, Anatoli, Khan, and Grunner.The audience for "The best entertainment on the planet!" consists of 7 or 8 bloodthirsty rowdy jackasses, one of whom closely resembles Singer-Songwriter-Pianist Randy Newman. Who knew?There is a subplot involving Ruben and some British waitress who works for Lance. She has a very nice apartment for a single woman on a shootfighting waitress salary. They go to a party where one song continuously plays: "Take me to your house", and boy is it catchy.In the end, Lance kidnaps Shingo, a terrible secret is revealed and Rawlins joins the fray in the shootfighterific climax. Will Lance make his casino? Will his assistant "Joseph Stalin" get his comeuppance? Will Shingo fight? Find out the answers to these questions and much, much, MUCH more in this rousing sequel where the action is as bone-crunching as the dialogue is flat. It caps off with an awesome freeze frame and thus concluding this Bolotastic sequel for the ages!

This mediocre movie's sets mostly remind me of the cheapest WWE "sport entertainment"; people supposed to be killing machines look and act more like WWE/WWF freaks from the 1980s. The storyline is ridiculous: undercover police chief ( say Steve Martin gets balls ) and rat-faced latino heel blackmail bunch of well-meaning fighters into a sting operation to bust a murderous ring whose henchman is a 150kg, 1m55 Chinese steroid Michelin Man whose looks make Bolo Yeung look like Alain Delon in his best days, go figure. This movie tries to copy here & there to look larger than life...the latino heel, a horse faced, long haired fighter who probably was thought to imitate the cheap Lorenzo Lamas flicks of the late 80s...Zabka plays the cute boy ala Van Damme...the movie fails on all but one respect: fight scenes make up most of it and the filler (acting, storyline, character development...) is kept to a bare minimum. Nice to see Bolo Yeung and shame he got so little screen time.

I liked this movie a lot;it had solid martial arts action, and Bolo's final fight made the whole thing worth watching. He is the master, his style is just so entertaining and a pleasure to watch. Yes, I wish he would had more scenes, but the movie was building up to it, we all knew the reluctant master was going in...and he delivered. Zabka was pretty good, it was such a nostalgic moment, seeing him fighting on screen again. Of course, the Capoeira fighter was another highlight I must say, being a practitioner myself. He made things a little more spicier than the movie otherwise would have been. There's a gratuitous love scene which is always nice, and I especially liked the arrogant bodyguard. Overall a solid movie and a lot of action.

After seeing Shootfighter 1, and the buckets of blood they shed, I was ready for another rousing jaunt of open handed heart massage, and chiropractics in a cage. But nooooooo, this was like the Barney version of the first movie, with that lamer from the Karate kid. At least Bolo Yeung still kicks booty, although he needs to do more movies like Bloodsport and Caddyshack.