Lethal Panther 2 (1993) aka 格殺令 aka “Lethal Panther” (UK) aka “Blood and Guts”
(My Way Film Co., Dir. Philip Ko)
Personal favourite of mine Yukari Oshima plays a Japanese Interpol agent sent to Manilla on the case of some Japanese terrorists with ties to a local gang. Quite what the gang actually do aside from randomly killing people isn’t made very clear but its something to do with arms smuggling. Anyway, Yukari teams up with the Hong Kong police (represented here by Sharon Kwok) and a tough guy bad-ass gwailo played by Edu Manzano. Family members are shot, the good guys are betrayed, and it all comes down to a battle between cops and the terrorists.
Man this film was bad. Completely uninspired shite. Shot in the Philippines for what looks like about $10US, the film has some of the worst editing I’ve EVER seen which completely ruins the already sub-par action scenes. The action scenes are hampered even further by the fact they used wire-work (very poor wire-work at that) for almost every fight, making them look unrealistic and dumb. There’s a lot of gun-play too, but it’s so poorly edited you won’t care. But the film really does try to make you care; after the first 10 minute action scene (probably the highlight of the movie) we get scene after scene of boring exposition carried by our hero Edu Manzano. Edu is a terrible actor/fighter who has zero screen presence. The entire time watching I just wanted to skip past his dreadfully boring scenes and get to Yukari, who ultimately has only a small role in this. She has Sharon Kwok was completely underutilized and they look like they couldn’t care less.
The film picks up a bit half way through when the gang order a crazed assassin to start picking off the cops, but then we get back into story telling mode and, oh god, Edu is trying to act again. It seems that every female side-character who meets Edu is doomed. Anyway, there are a few okay action scenes; the fairly decent opening, a supermarket fight (which contains a wince inducing moment where some poor stunt man is thrown out of a window from the 1st floor down to the ground) and the finale which takes place in a house (to the ‘Terminator’ theme!) and has Yukari doing a wire-assisted hurricanrana on some poor sod.
This could have had potential as a “so bad its good” movie but it’s poor story, characterisation, script and editing rob it even of that dubious honour. A pile of turd.
3/10 (1 star for Oshima’s cute haircut)
Watch online here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tSGzXX2sVmA
Thanks to hkmdb.com for the pic and the Chinese title.
