Tiger Cage 2
11/13/00
Review #2
Format: Non Subtitled Rental VHS
Stars: Donnie Yen, David Wu, Robin Shou, Michael Woods, John Salvitti, Cynthia Khan, Carol Sheng, Rosamund Kwan, other unknowns

I decided to review this once more for those of you who really REALLY care about Donnie Yen's movies. Tiger Cage 2's plot, from what I could understand, revolves around some kind of deal between David Ng Dai Wai's character and that of Robin Shou. As I said in the first review of this, I have no clue exactly what the plot involves. There were no subtitles on the VHS. The other stuff I think I know is that some chick comes in and shoots some guy, and she's probably in line with Shou so Khan fights her. But, I don't know what that has to do with anthing.

Without the plot, though, this movie isn't incomplete by any means. In fact, I don't really care about it at all. I'll be blunt; this is the golden gem of modern day HK action. Absolutely as good as any out there. Non stop action everywhere, car chases, gun fights, and a sword fight to add to the numerous hand to hand fights, on top of some truly insane stuntwork. I had no clue a movie that cost me $5 and is an ex-rental tape from a Chinese video market could be as good as this, when I sometimes spend $15 on crap like Interpol Connection or Eat My Dust. Everything here is so complete. The score is plain good, no junk, fits the mood, and the mood isn't ALWAYS serious. Bring in Rosamund Kwan, who performs so well and is cute beyond limits, and the music changes to a light hearted beat. A fight, the music is still good. The lighting is awesome, sets are awesome (it's a city, therefore I'm happy), everything is awesome. I'm just raving here, so I need to justify myself efficiently. That's why I have decided to post 39 pictures, just so you know what I'm talking about.

To begin with, David Wu beats a guy up, and it looks good. They're by an elevator, and even though it's a small exchange, when you watch this scene, you know the movie will be good afterwords. A guy does some good stunts immediately afterword, like falling down some stairs and going through the windshield of a car after smashing into another car.



Ok by here I can almost understand what's happening in the story. Someone dressed in all black with a helmet comes in and kills a witness in her own home, hides, Donnie and Kwan come and are handcuffed by Khan, but then the person in black comes in, and Donnie and Kwan (their doubles anyways) do a high drop from a balcony and whoever doubled for Kwan spilled pretty badly, almost buckling over. Not pretty. Khan gets in a gunfight and looks professional.



Immediately afterwords, Wu comes after Donnie and Khan, who are still handcuffed, and Donnie holds his own pretty well until he gets Kwan's arm over the wrong shoulder, which gets him stuck, but he throws Kwan at Wu and uppercuts him over the side of an overpass, but he holds on, which looked a little too real considering they had a good shot in front of Wu when he was holding on, with traffic going back and forth underneath. Impressive, however they did it.



There is a funny scene after this where Donnie takes Kwan to his house to get the handcuffs off, and he has to go to the bathroom. Khan is outside the door, Donnie is taking a long distance shot, and Khan decides to drop to the floor and Donnie comes out with a small mess on his pants. Very funny. The relationship between the two of them is well done.

Khan takes Donnie to find Wu, and they have a good fight. It's realistic looking, with Donnie coming from behind first with a baseball bat, and the two of them ending up in a gridlocked position, only to both be knocked out and flying down a hill on a little cart, into the busy street. Wu takes on some more guys while Donnie makes a run for it, and the two of them, though still hating eachother, fight off two guys in a sewer. Good stuff. Not all formulated. It's well filmed and, yea judge for yourself.



Donnie's next scene is all his own. To start with, he and Kwan seem to be getting closer and closer while eating at an outdoor restaurant, and he spits some insult at a grubby looking guy. I don't know why. He takes on five or so goons, then runs off with Kwan, takes out some more, and gets onto a bus after Kwan's been taken away. If Donnie did all of this stunt by himself, I'm impressed. It sure looked that way. He gets on the wrong bus, and seeing the right one on the side of the bus he's on, he goes through a window and hangs onto the side of the other one. Then he kicks a guy by bringing his leg straight up the side. On top of the bus, he takes one guy for a little while, which looks really cool cause the camera was positioned to look at them with the buildings flying by in the background. The guy he's fighting does an incredible stunt where he falls off the bus onto the rear window of a moving car, and you can barely see him on the far right when it happens. Badly filmed part, probably the one complaint I have about this movie. But an awesome stunt nonetheless. This entire scene, like the rest of the movie (despite the previous complaint) is exceptionally well filmed, something that's hard to find today. AND IT'S ALL AT NIGHT TOO! That's an amazing feat for an HK action film, a well filmed fight scene at night.



Khan fights Carol Sheng next. Not a whole lot of choreography (it's still good), but Sheng slides a table at Khan and she jumps over it and delivers a good kick mid air. Khan's sleeve catches on fire too. After that she drives a car after a guy on a bike. All of it, of course, is well filmed.



Wu and Donnie get chased by like 16 guys who all have swords. Wu takes on the first few. David Wu is quite good looking when he takes part in action scenes. He impressed me in In the Line of Duty 5, but he's even better in this one. His double does a jump off a wall followed by a kick and a 360 before hitting the ground. Donnie, meanwhile, takes 10 guys at once with a garbage can lid, doing some good kicks and finishing off three of them with a splits kick and then a forward kick, all in the same jump.



The big one. Wu and Shou totally duke it out in an office. This is one of the two best fights in the movie. The two of them exchange so well. Kicks and punches are well mixed, blocks with both hands and feet. Wu holds his own very well for being so much smaller than Shou (I'm talking about the acting aspect, though Donnie's even smaller I think). Shou does some truly awesome kicks, picture perfect, all filmed better than any of these new age guys who like fast moving cameras can do. All of it takes place in a small office building with grey, blue and white/silver colors, good stunts like breaking glass and doors falling down. And lots of beatings. Wu gets trampled by Shou, who leads the entire fight and is driven by a desire to impress Woods and Salvitti who are the spectators making fun of him. So he's overly brutal at the end, which just works perfectly. It's hard to get better than this sometimes. For a two minute fight, it's so impressive that I have probably watched it over a hundred times by now.



Donnie and Salvitti have a sword fight, which is interesting considering every other fight had been hand to hand. It's a real cinematic treat actually. Salvitti is convincing, and the choreography is very good, with the two of them utilizing the environment, which is basically a dark room with dim blue lights and a BIG fan going on in the background. Something you'd see in a videogame or something. They jump off the walls, do really high jumps, and good looking kicks, when applied.



Donnie and Woods have a wrestling match basically after that in a warehouse. Woods, in top form, is so agile I wonder if he's just wearing a suit. He does awesome jumping kicks and a forward handspring that goes so fast you get confused about what the hell just happened. Donnie has his hands tied up with a chain, so it makes things interesting. Woods throws Donnie all over the place until Donnie unleashes some good kicks, with some suckers too like a kick that intentionally misses but goes immediately lower when Woods isn't ready. Woods is definitely a worthy opponent any time, and he was actually the only good looking fighter against Donnie in Crystal Hunt.



And then, Shou and Donnie finish it off with 28 moves that are done to perfection. 8 hits, camera change, 8 hits, camera change, 8 kicks, pause for 4, 4 more hits. Almost music to my ears. It's even better to watch. They work so well together in this fight that such a small piece of choreography, which is followed by some more brutal fistwork, can be a perfect ending to such a great movie. In the Taiwanese release, I guess they didn't like how Donnie got away with breaking the law as an officer, so they re-did the ending with Khan fighting Shou. I hear it's not good, but you know me, I want it anyways!! To see this fight, go to the Fight Choreography Page and download it there.



In conclusion, as I said, this is the gem of modern HK action films. If you like choreography, get this. And it's not a canned fruit movie either. The characters are interesting and there aren't times when you know that there will be a fight, except for the end but that's obvious. Realistic by some means. I recommend to everyone. Plus, the gore content is actually pretty minimal.

5/5

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