Michelle Yeoh is called in to help solve an armed robbery and uncovers a conspiracy involving ex-Vietnamese soldiers, one of whom being her ex-fiance. Including many of the typical elements of mainstream Hong Kong action films, Supercop 2's weaknesses are the usual corny musical montages, weak dialogue and
stereotypical characters, but Stanley Tong's able direction and the effective leads make for a cut above the usual slapstick and martial arts formula. Most of the film is more serious in tone than its Jackie Chan inspired heritage, although Chan himself appears in a particularly weak scene that looks like it was swept up off the cutting room floor of another film and glued in as an excuse to put his name in the credits. Yeoh's energetic skill makes for some bracing fight sequences and Ronguang Yu makes an interesting and charismatic villain, with some very nicely engineered heist sequences thrown into the mix. Although corny in places, as a whole the bad outweighs the good. I just wish some of these DVD companies would catch up with the 21st century; offering dubbed films with no audio or subtitling options whatsoever just isn't good enough in this technological day and age.
March 7, 2008
