Review: SPL 2: A Time for Consequences

HK cop Kit (Wu Jing) is so dedicated in bringing down crime bigwig Mr. Hung (Louis Koo) that he has gone so far undercover as a junkie to actually get hooked on drugs for real. The only person on the force with any respect left for him is his uncle Wah (Simon Yam), who tries to look out for him. Unfortunately, their attempt at nabbing Mr. Hung is botched, and Kit ends up getting thrown in a Thai prison for life. It’s there that Kit comes across prison guard Chai (Tony Jaa), whose young daughter Sa has leukaemia. Chai works for warden Ko Chun (Max Zhang), a brutal man in cahoots with Mr. Hung. Chai, being conscientious teams up with Kit (despite neither speaking or understanding the other’s language), who is looking for a way out. Meanwhile, Mr. Hung is afflicted by a dicky ticker and can only be saved by a transplant with his brother’s heart.

 

The original “SPL” had an awesome trailer that promised martial arts bad arse supremacy, but turned out to be a mostly dull, ordinary police procedural. It was a massive disappointment, I wanted to see Sammo Hung kick some arse. Now comes this 2015 in-name-only sequel from director Cheang Pou-Soi, which features Thai martial arts sensation Tony Jaa in a large supporting role. It’s only marginally better than the first film, I’m afraid.

 

Scripted by Leung Lai-Yin and Wong Ying, this HK/Chinese film is your typically operatic, pretentious crime melodrama occasionally enlivened by bursts of action. And Tony Jaa ice-skating. Really badly. The film starts off well, with an interesting idea of a cop going undercover as a junkie to nab Mr. Big. However, it’s not long before you realise what that ends up giving you is “The Raid 2” meets “The French Connection 2”. In other words, a little of it goes not terribly far. It’s overstuffed, overpopulated, and overall not as easy to get into as you would like. There’s something here, but boy do you have to suffer through a lot of dull moments to get to the goods.

 

Jaa is actually really likeable here, playing a prison guard and doting father to a sick little girl, he’s really easy to relate to. And in full flight (or full fight, as it were) the guy is simply amazing. His first fight scene shows just how incredible he is. Speaking of incredible, there’s a helluva guard vs. inmate prison fight with a lot of moving parts. That was really sensational, if a bit reminiscent of one of the best moments from “The Raid 2”. In fact, all of the action is terrific and crisply choreographed. There’s probably more of it than in the first film, and that’s one of the main reasons why it gets a higher rating from me than the first film. That and some good performances by Jaa, veteran Simon Yam, and Wu Jing as the troubled junkie cop. I was also very impressed by the boss fighting skills of Max Zhang as the prison warden. There’s a really good 2 on 1 fight between him and the team of Jaa and Wu Jing that is slightly hampered by the intercutting with other stories. It sums up the whole damn film, really. It should’ve been Jaa & Wu Jing vs. Max Zhang, with Jaa’s sick daughter as a side story. Sure, that would mean you’d lose much of the fine work by Simon Yam, but the parts with him and the ailing crime boss just add too much unnecessary complication, plot, characters, parallels, and…muchness. It’s too much movie, something I’m getting sick of saying about these sorts of films. It’s what held back “The Raid 2”, much as I wanted to love that thing to death, having been a fan of the first film. Some will probably find it clever, and that’s fine. I find this sort of thing needlessly complicated and putting good action to poor use. It’s two films in one, and it’s to the detriment of both.

 

Good action scenes and performances, but I was occasionally bored here with the needlessly complicated, epic approach to storytelling. Typically pretentious stuff, only occasionally enjoyable. Nice use of Tony Jaa, however, which isn’t something one often says these days, unfortunately. 

 

Rating: C+