SPL 2: A Time for Consequences

If you like action films, you need to see "Kill Zone 2."

Mostly, just as "SPL" did with Yen, this sequel serves as an ideal showcase for talented martial artists.

If there's one rewarding thing about many Hong Kong action directors, it's that they rarely dawdle in getting to what fight fans have come for: bracing shootouts and high-impact fisticuffs and footwork.

What makes Kill Zone 2 remarkable is the head-pounding martial-arts action, a ballet of brutality that makes up in murderous choreography what it lacks in narrative cohesion. No one goes to a movie called Kill Zone 2 for plot anyway.

Cheang keeps the movie in a state of exaggerated emotion; it opens with the choral "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem and a slow-mo shot tinted arterial red, and rarely lets up from there.

Ultimately the story is secondary to the action, which rarely lets up and never lets viewers down.

These kinetic action sequences can't be done justice in a written review, but the good news is that they really do deliver the goods.

Cheang has an incredibly rare sense of scope and this callused fighting film feels far more expansive than most globetrotting Hollywood actioners.

Bone-crunching fight scenes, over-the-top melodrama and jaw-dropping coincidences: epic martial-arts thriller Kill Zone 2 boasts the lot.

Director Soi Cheang gives the audience plenty to look at in this violent ode to male bonding and family values.