Hak mau II: Chi saat Yip Lai Hing

Now, I can't claim to have been particularly impressed with the 1991 movie "Hak Mau" (aka "Black Cat"), and I do believe that I've only seen this 1992 sequel titled "Hak Mau II: Chi Saat Yip Lai Hing" (aka "Black Cat 2") once before. But truthfully, I have entirely forgotten about it. And thus, I opted to sit down and revisit it here in 2024.

The storyline in the movie, as written by James Fung, Gam-Ching Sin and Ivy Lee, was pretty straightforward. It made for some mindless entertainment, where you just lean back in the seat, munch on the snacks and watch the action on the screen and try not to cringe too hard at the script and plot in the movie.

The movie is just riddled with plot holes and things that make little sense. For example, a squad of trained American soldiers apparantly have the aim of stormtroopers in "Star Wars", as they hit nothing they shoot at. And the Chinese henchmen just easily gunned down the soldiers as if they were no threat.

The version of the movie that I sat down to watch had the American, Arabs and Russians dubbed into speaking Cantonese. It was just cringeworthy to witness. I absolutely loathe dubbing in movies, as it serves no purpose whatsoever. Even in America, everyone were speaking Cantonese. It was absolutely ridiculous.

The only cast members that I am familiar with in this movie are Robin Shou and Jade Leung. And despite some rather questionable dubbing, then the acting performances in the movie were fair.

The sound of the majority of assault rifles and submachine guns shooting throughout the course of the movie are just hilarious. They sounded like weapons at a laser tag game. And even better yet, the weapons didn't even have silencers attached to them.

The sheer amount of action, throughout the course of the 91 minutes that the movie ran for, makes "Hak Mau II: Chi Saat Yip Lai Hing" a bit more watchable than its predecessor. But the dubbing was a mood killer, making it hard to sit through the movie.

My rating of director Stephen Shin's 1992 movie "Hak Mau II: Chi Saat Yip Lai Hing" lands on a four out of ten stars.