Bloodsport II (1996)
After thief Alex Cardo gets caught while stealing an ancient katana in East Asia, he soon finds himself imprisoned and beaten up by the crowd there. One of the guards, Demon, feels upset by Alex appearance and tortures him as often as he gets the opportunity. Alex finds a friend and mentor in the jailhouse, Master Sun, who teaches him a superior fighting style called Iron Hand. When a 'best of the best kumite' is to take place, Demon gets an invitation. Now Master Sun and Alex need to find a way to let Alex take part in the kumite too.
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Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!
Absolutely Fantastic
The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
Daniel Bernhardt stars as Alex Cardo, a thief who learns how to fight after he is sent to prison, seems he is in prison due to him trying to steal a sacred sword, however now trained in the arts of martial, he sets up to redeem himself in the kumite. Donald Gibb shows up to reprise his role, even though he plays a different character. Bloodsport II opens like an Indianna Jones movie with Bernhardt whipping some asses and trying to make off with the sword, however it isn't until the prison sequence where we get the endless training and ponderous Asian philosophy, to then we get the endless stream of fight sequences. These fight sequences are pretty good but due to the lack of any interest in the characters, the fancy footwork is the only saving grace of this exhausted sequel. Still it's an alright movie for martial arts fan though.* * out of 4-(Fair)
After watching "Bloodsport" and enjoying that movie to the fullest, I just had to watch the sequels too even though van Damme has nothing to do with them. Instead, Swiss Daniel Bernhardt takes the role of our fighting hero. In my opinion, he makes a really good replacement for van Damme. The fight scenes are really great in this movie too, and there are lots of it to make every martial arts fan out there satisfied. The villain in this movie, 'Demon', is unfortunately not nearly as interesting as Bolo Yeung's 'Chong-Li' was in the first. But that's a minor detail. But seriously, this "Iron-hand"-stuff should have been removed from the script. It was just too ridiculous in a movie that tries to be a bit realistic. On the upside: It was really cool to see that Donald Gibb returned as 'Jackson'.
I have now seen the 4 bloodsport films and this is the best followed by the first then the third and finally the fourth. This has a reasonably decent story and the martial arts scenes are some of the best around. For the record Bloodsport 4: The Final Chapter is quite bad. The fight scenes and story are ridiculous, but Bloodsport 2 has to be recommended to any action movies fan.
I can say this Bloodsport is as good as the first one but this has better fighting scenes. This has better fighting than 1 and 3. I haven't seen the fourth one though. Well all I can say is it's very good. Watch this movie because in my view it's worth watching.