Shootfighter II (1996)

To me, this movie is perfection.

The Age of Commercialism

As Good As It Gets

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

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.

Ok. No law states that anyone appearing in a Martial Arts flick, must be endowed with copious amounts of acting talent. Most of those who appreciate these films, watch for the fight sequences, and how well they are done. I, myself, love a great actioner. The storyline with Bolo Yeung, and characters "Ruben" and "Nick", is easy enough to digest. As I mentioned, this is not Shakespeare. Yet, this "movie" has no excitement, whatsoever. The actors try, but the fighting sequences were as exciting as watching dust settle on a lampshade.This, plus ho-hum production values, equals one movie that could replace SLEEP-EZE as America's main relief from insomnia.

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.

A bad bad movie... terrible plot, hinges on Bolo Yeung's charater, but he speaks maybe 20 words in the entire movie and only has one fight scene - still in great shape considering he was also in the kung fu classic "Enter The Dragon" Interesting to see William Zabka ("Johnny" from The Karate Kid) in another martial-arts role.