Best of the Best 2 (1993)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

A lot of fun.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Overcoming an embarrassment is a perfectly righteous ambition; the ambition of Best of the Best 2 however is that it's also correct to overcome embarrassment without being rewarded.When embarrassment and when victory are part of the same situation, the logical truth is that the victory is not a victory and that the embarrassment is not an embarrassment. Instead, the victory is a defeat , and the embarrassment is a tribute.The defeat of a tribute, is the tribute of a defeat - the celebration of a weakness. And it's then at this point that Best of the Best 2's story starts to make sense.Celebrating a weakness, in actual fact, is a rational type of outlook on life. It makes sense to want to dwell on weaknesses. However, it's a correct part of the balance that celebrating a weakness isn't a reward: a reward is an objective, and it makes no sense for the celebration of a weakness to be an objective.An objective is a future. If the celebration of a weakness is a future, that means that history is meant to create a weakness so that it can be valued. By definition, a weakness is something that's meant to be moved past - so it doesn't make any sense to live history in order to celebrate moving past something. Because it's impossible, for history to conduct itself without celebration whatsoever, the balance is for the experience of tribute to be met with redundancy - the necessity of celebration gets dealt with by the relief and by the thankfulness of feeling redundant. The perversity of forced celebration is balanced out by the celebration of forced pointlessness

I wasn't really a huge fan of the original BEST OF THE BEST. It came across as an adult version (but nonetheless family friendly) version of THE KARATE KID, complete with a team of adults competing in a karate championship. The stakes were low and there wasn't a whole lot of excitement to be had. What would I make of the sequel? The good news is that this is a VAST improvement. BEST OF THE BEST 2 jettisons the family-orientated nature of the first film to provide a bloodthirsty, hard-hitting sequel which plays out as a riff on Van Damme's KICKBOXER. There's an illegal fight tournament, death at the hands of a monstrous opponent, and revenge in mind. There's even some '90s-style B-movie action outside of the ring, complete with bloody shoot-outs and the like. It's a heck of a lot of fun.Eric Roberts, Phillip Rhee, and Chris Penn all return from the first film, although Roberts and Penn have relatively limited screen time. Rhee is the real star here and he holds his own in a series of brutally violent fight scenes. I love the over the top sound effects and explicit violence of these '90s fight flicks and BEST OF THE BEST 2 doesn't disappointment. The German Ralf Moeller (UNIVERSAL SOLDIER) makes for a convincingly tough opponent and the film as a whole is replete with violence and beatdowns.The supporting cast contains appearances from a number of familiar faces, not least the unmissable Meg Foster (THEY LIVE) who contributes a cameo. Sonny Landham (PREDATOR) has a small but violent role as the man who trains the team. Simon Rhee, Phillip's real-life brother, also returns from the original, and Wayne Newton (LICENCE TO KILL) plays a weaselly fight promoter. Personally, I was more than happy to see Patrick Kilpatrick (ERASER) and Nicholas Worth (GABRIEL KNIGHT 2: THE BEAST WITHIN) in minor roles as thugs.

Ah, the 1990s and the halcyon days of STV. Phil Rhee returns as Tommy Lee in BOTB2 along with Eric Roberts. They are buddies who must avenge the death of their friend Travis (Chris Penn), who dies at the hands of Brakus, a Dolph Lundgren lookalike who talks like Ah-nuld. There is only one reason for the movie's existence, and that is the almost-constant kung fu fighting. There are a couple of decent firefights as well, especially one staged in the Arizona desert. Rhee is as impressive as ever, and Roberts fakes kung fu reasonably well. The big Native American actor from PREDATOR plays Rhee's blood brother. You understandably will have to suspend your sense of disbelief, as at any moment, our heroes could have been dispatched with a single bullet to the brain.

May contain spoilers! This is the next installment of the Best of the Best series. Some of the actors return (Robert, Rhee, Penn, and Gross) along with a new cast of characters.Alex (Robert), Tommy (Rhee), and Travis (Penn) open a marital arts school in Las Vegas. Travis fights in an underground fighting arena called the Coliseum, for money. After a friend gets killed by Brakus, in the Coliseum, Alex and Tommy going on a mission to stop Brakus.The violence is turned up in this film, which makes it some what better. The lines are cheesy one liners, like most martial arts films, and give a darker tone to the series. The fight scenes are done very well, and can be quite brutal at times. The acting could be better, but like most martial arts films, acting is not the number one concern.If you like good fight scenes watch this movie, you will not be disappointed.