Tiger Cage 2
Stars: Donnie Yen, Michael Woods, John Salvitti, Cynthia Khan, other unknownes
The plot is simple: I don't know. I had no clue. This is what I hate about movies.. with no subtitles. I can't understand Cantonese worth crap, but that's ok. I'm sure the plot was great, because what I saw were great sets and actors, and what I heard were great sound edits and acting. Here's what I do know, though. Donnie Yen plays a cop, who gets involved with a girl from Pedicab Driver, and then fights a bunch of guys. He also finds some money, and there's a cop somewhere that is really a bad cop, I think.
But like I said, I didn't care that I couldn't understand the plot. The film was so high quality that my attention wouldn't have been on the conversations much anyways. Although the camera is not on par with Hollywood's cameras (then again it WAS a VHS), it's still good. And what acting I picked up was surperbly done. Donnie isn't cooky this time as he was in Crystal Hunt, but instead takes it pretty seriously. And every other cast member did a great job as well, even the 2 Americans themselves. The sound effects, although at times a tiny bit later than the actual hit, were picked with care. Many movies, sadly, I think are ruined by bad sound effects. This one is not.
And I think now is a decent time to move onto the action. What I was hoping for was a movie chock full of action, and that's what I got. Only cost me $5 too. There must have been like 12 separate fights, and I really enjoyed them more than those in In the Line of Duty 4, and they were more abundant. I draw a parallel between those two movies because they have like 4 of the same actors, playing the same basic roles. It's like a different dish, varying slightly by taste and color. But the fights were awesome. I couldn't have asked for much more than just more, which I always ask for with a good movie such as this one. Donnie Yen and, well, basically every guy in the movie that does any action whatsoever (that totals about 23 guys I suppose) act as though they were born into kickboxing. There was one person I couldn't place, but I had seen him before. In case you can help, he's the one who fights Donnie in the warehouse at the very end and also fights Donnie's partner, whoever that was. He did an excellent job as well.
I think that if I described all the fights in the movie I'd be writing a book, so I'll make overviews of only 2. The first I'd like to mention takes place in an office with Donnie's partner against the guy I don't know. When I chopped this scene up to JUST ACTION, and nothing in between, it turned out to be a minute 40, which is a LOT of boxing with nothing in between. Of course, this isn't exactly what's in the movie because the drama would be missing without that stuff, but what's there in the way of action is furious and exciting. The villian is amazing and does a picture perfect jumping reverse kick into the other's chest. I'll get a clip up as soon as possible. He also, RIGHT AFTER throwing like 4 punches raises his leg up and does a Ken Lo on the guy with no effort needed. Pretty amazing. (I'll put that in the same clip too).
Then, the fight in the warehouse is impressive as well. Donnie fights Michael Woods the the villian mentioned above. Michael still amazes me with how he can move. He's so massive, and I wouldn't expect that someone of his proportions could move that way, but he can. Almost reminds me of Sammo Hung, except Sammo's abilities outshine him by a long shot, sorry. Nonetheless, Yen and Woods put on a great show, and Yen has his hands tied up the whole time! This was a good way to showcase some great looking kicks, some of them almost like sucker shots in a way. Then Donnie fights the unknown villian, and I wasn't as impressed with this as I wanted to be because it only lasted for maybe half a minute, but they still went at it pretty well. I counted about 22 (or 23, couldn't tell because there were 23 hit sounds) hits in 8 seconds. That's a better speed than Dragon Fight's last brawl between Wei and Jet Li having 53 in 30 seconds.
I thoroughly enjoyed this movie despite it's subtraction of subtitles. Some day I'll understand Cantonese and mark subtitles as a negative aspect of a movie I bet, but for now I'm content just watching a wonderfully produced piece such as this one. Cheers to every actor in the film for such a great job. EXCEPT FOR ONE SCENE! Donnie and a goon are fighting on top of a bus, and Donnie knocks the guy off, and he falls onto the back window of a moving car, breaks through it, and rolls off, and the cameraman caught half of it in the dark (on his way down), and it was to the extreme right of the screen! A great stunt, ALMOST RUINED! Oh well, it's still visible, and I was impressed. There were other stunts that I liked as well such as Yen's partner hanging off an overpass with traffic 40 feet below, really. No faking this one.
I give it a well deserved rating of 10/10 because of the efforts. Give me one of these any day of the week.
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