New Kung Fu Cult Master 2 倚天屠龍記之聖火雄風

It still looks cheap and is still overstuffed but at least in kind of ties up the story left from the previous film

Directed by Wong Jing and Keung Kwok Man

Starring: Raymond Lam, Janice Man, Sabrina Qiu, Yun Qianqian, Jade Leung, Alex Fong, Elvis Tsui, Yu Kang, Mars

China and Hong Kong

2022

New Kung fu Cult Master 2 follows directly from the first film now with the 6 martial arts masters captured by Zhao Min (Janice Man) and her father who are working to convert them to work for the government. With an undercover agent of the evil sect inside Zhao Min’s ranks, Wuji (Raymond Lam) manages to save the 6 masters and this infuriates Zhao Min’s father resulting in her leadership being removed. Zhao Min enforces one of the 3 promises made by Wuji in the previous film and wishes to see the Dragon Sabre which is located in Bing Huo Island. With the death of Mie Jue (Jade Leung), Zhou Zhirou (Sabrina Qiu) is appointed the new leader of Er Mei and due to some dispute within her clan she joins Wuji, Zhao Min and Xiao Zhao (Yun Qianqian) to head towards Bing Huo island. Double crossing and triple crossing sees the legendary Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre fall into the enemies hands. Wuji and co return back to mainland and faces the new enemy as well as the ultimate villain.

Despite being a tad more focused than the previous film it still fails to cram the whole host of characters and side stories successfully. Even with the 3 female leads front and centre the film struggles to make their love for Wuji feel affecting this in turn makes there story arch lacking any emotional impact. The aesthetic from the previous film has transitioned over to this film with the cinematography still looking low budget and sets looking cheap, though this is probably due to the fact that the 2 films were shot simultaneously. To highlight how lazy the script is there’s this one moment in the film where there’s this random off screen narration explaining how our protagonists has returned to the mainland but this is a one off and has never been used before or even after. The film does kind of tie off everything but there was always this threat of the government but this is not resolved, so I guess there’s room for a sequel.

While the first film had guest appearances from heavy hitters like Donnie Yen and Louis Koo neither of them returns here. Elvis Tsui who guest appeared as the Lion King in the previous film has a more substantial role but he hams it up big time, his blind man acting is overly exaggerated. Yun Qianqian returns as Xiao Zhao but she is given even less to do, Janice Man also returns as Zhao Min and this time around she is featured more heavily. This time round Man feels like she fits more comfortably in the role this may be due to the fact that she is no longer a leader figure and has more of a relationship with Wuji. Doing a lot more of the heavy lifting this time round is Wong Jing regular Sabrina Qiu as Zhirou, though she was in the previous film she had less to do there, here she has to go through multiple stages of anger, sadness and joy but sadly Qiu lacks the thespian skills to handle these fluctuations of emotion and her eventual turn of character is so left field and forceful. Which brings on more next problem, there is just too much double crossing and triple crossing involved, which would have been fine but things move along at such a brisk pace so things are often glossed over or quickly resolved.

Action wise the film does improve on the first film but only marginally, they are more substantial and does have a bit more hand to hand combat before devolving into CGI overload. Action features more frequently but set pieces are a tad uninspired. Again Raymond Lam shoulders much of the action but there’s little to make him stand out, it’s a case of some hand to hand fighting and then resorting to energy blasts to resolve matters. Jade Leung gets a nice little fight scene albeit brief with Yu Kang, nothing spectacular but more welcome than the CGI fights. There’s a fight midway through that is oddly comical with physiques all ignored, it’s hard to describe but it sees the 3 assailants floating in mid-air in a triangle. Wirework is hit and miss with a sequence seeing various characters free falling from a burning tower and its oddly slow how they fall not helped by the atrocious CGI background. There are way too many times a new powerful technique or skill is introduced just to be just as quickly countered. The ending is so badly staged with all the martial arts masters converging on the villain to rescue someone but none of them do anything with only Wuji having to deal with it. The end does see a fight with martial arts actor Shi Yanneng but as with the first film its more of a show case of energy blasts and chi kung fu.

In fact watching these two films I felt like I was watching episodes of Dragonball or Naruto with everyone’s skill level constantly fluctuating, more powerful characters being introduced and a McGuffin weapon to counteract other the weapons.

The film fails to give sufficient time to all the side plots and a trilogy would probably have benefited the overall story. If you enjoyed the first film that I’m sure you will enjoy this film.