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Released by: New Concorde
Released on: November 12, 2002.
Director: Joe Mari Avellana, Kevin Tent
Cast: Blake Bahner, Gary Rooney, Roaxanne Baird, Ronald William Lawrence, Vic Diaz
Year: 1993
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The Movie:
In Blackbelt II: Fatal Force (a sequel in name only to the first Blackbelt movie, which starred Don 'The Dragon' Wilson), Blake Bahner plays a bad ass Los Angeles cop named Brad Spyder. He likes to beat up punks and fight crime but when his partner gets killed, he goes a little rogue and boards a plane to Hawaii because that's it happened. Brad is on the case. Turns out his dead partner was investigating the circumstances surrounding his brother, previously thought to have been killed in action in Vietnam. Nope, he wasn't dead, he was in Hawaii being held captive by some mysterious criminal organization that puzzlingly specializes in keeping 'Nam vets believing themselves to be P.O.W.'s - it's a pretty odd business plan.
So as Spyder starts digging around, it turns out that there's a slight method to their madness. See, the bad guys are basically extorting a rich guy named Roderick Pendleton whose son was in the Vietnam war under the false pretense that they know where he is and can get him back. The thing is, they've been holding onto him all this time, milking the poor guy for more and more money to fund their operation. Spyder runs into trouble with the local Hawaiian cops, lead by a guy named Akido (Vic Diaz) but soon starts busting enough of the right heads to start making some progress and you just know he's gonna smash up that crime ring but good!
This movie doesn't make a whole lot of sense and was obviously patched together using footage from some completely different movie. The IMDB connects this movie to another one called Spyder from 1988, which may have been the project that the 'war' footage that doesn't remotely fit with the rest of the movie was spliced in from. This is a New Concorde production, after all, and Roger Corman isn't the type to let perfectly good war footage go to waste, not when it can be used in a kickboxing cop film, nosiree. The problem is that it's done in such a completely haphazard way and with such blatant disregard for logic that periodically throughout the movie you're likely to have no idea what exactly is going on. The damn thing cuts all over the place and is choppier than a set of ginsu knives.
What makes the movie worth watching? Well, first of all we get Chief O'Donnel (John Dulaney), the most amazing Irish cop character in the universe. His accent is so hackneyed and bizarre that you can't help but love him. You really do expect him to try and hide his Lucky Charms from some dastardly kids or reveal his secret pot of gold to Spyder, but sadly that never happens. We also get Vic Diaz, who seems to appear in all of these movies, and Vic Diaz is always awesome. Here's he's as roly-poly and super smiley as ever. He's adorable. Also, lots of stuff explodes in the movie, well, mostly just huts. Lots of huts explode in the movie. There are also some cool, bloody shoot outs but the sound effects go out of synch in a lot of these scenes which kind of takes away from it a bit.
As to Blake himself? Well, he probably did the best job that he could here. The guy has no charisma and delivers his lines in as loud a manner as possible. He yells a lot and he kicks a lot of people in the face. He gets four decent fight scenes here and while they could have been shot and edited better than they are, he does alright in the fight scenes if not so well in the dramatic ones, of which there are very few.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Blackbelt II arrives on DVD in a fullscreen transfer, which is fine because it looks like the film was composed that way as there doesn't appear to be any picture information missing on the sides. Picture quality is decent overall; it's clear and colors are represented well with minimal spotting and grain on the print. It's not amazingly sharp or mind blowing in its depiction of fine detail but for an older DVD release of a low budget movie, and it just might be a little bit cleaner and more defined looking than the average New Concorde DVD from this era.
The Dolby Digital stereo was fine, dialogue was easy to understand, and overall it was adequate. Not remarkable, but adequate in that the levels are properly balanced and there are no problems with hiss or distortion even if it's occasionally a bit flat.
New Concorde has supplied trailers for a few other properties, interactive menus, and scene selection.
The Final Word:
Lazy, goofy and poorly made, Blackbelt II is still moderately amusing despite the fact that it really is an obvious cut and paste job. Bahner has very little charisma but kicks people rather well and if you're in the mood for some good old fashioned senseless violence and don't need much in the way of an interesting plot, you could do worse.
