Home Reviews Review: Kill Zone 2 (SPL 2: A Time for Consequences)

Review: Kill Zone 2 (SPL 2: A Time for Consequences)

Zhang Jin and Tony Jaa star in Well Go USA's KILL ZONE 2 (SPL2: A TIME FOR CONSEQUENCES)

For the most part, it helps when movies tend to need stories. That’s what we always anticipate, but they’re not always important or even good. That’s a problem that Kill Zone 2 (SPL 2: A Time for Consequences) has. There is a story, but I can’t honestly say it’s good or even all that necessary for those who are interested in watching it.

The story that we see here is based on a man being forced to take a job as a corrections officer (Tony Jaa) at a prison in order to get money for his daughters bone marrow transplant. While being there, he runs into a prisoner who claims to be an undercover cop who for some odd reason actually became a drug addict in order to go undercover. As we find out, not only might he be telling the truth, it turns out that he may have the key to save the guard’s daughter.

That’s only part of the story in Kill Zone 2. There’s a bunch more, but that would probably be too much to explain. If done properly, the amount of story seen here can be fine in some films, but that doesn’t happen in this instance. I’ll touch on this in a bit, but I’ll focus on the action for the moment.

Most people would expect something called Kill Zone 2 to feature a bit more killing throughout its duration. While people do manage to die, there’s a great deal of downtime in between. I’m assuming this is because someone somewhere wanted to make an action movie with more dramatic elements, but it fails in that sense. The good news is that most of this down time is also within the first hour.

During this hour, it’s difficult to figure out what’s going on in terms of plot and story. The majority of this is mainly due to them not doing a good enough job of telling us who the characters are. Doing so allows the audience to not only figure out who every important character is, it would also let us in on what drives these people at the center of this movie that’s aiming to be a dramatic tale of violence and mayhem.

They also aren’t always good at letting us know more about the circumstances in some instances. A mix of these issues is what damages the movie. It always feels strange when a new character is introduced, but it’s even harder to find out what role they’re playing. Even when you notice a clear connection between characters, you still have a difficult time figuring how exactly it is they know each other and what they’re there for. Many of these things are explained later on, but this stuff leaves you perplexed for longer than it should.

Once we move passed that tedious first hour, I found myself realizing that they hadn’t even really moved into the story much. This pretty much makes the first 60 minutes look like an even bigger waste of time since many of the aspects of the plot haven’t even truly started up yet. In film or any form of entertainment really, we ultimately can’t forget it’s important to move the story forward in a way that’s captivating while still promoting stability. That doesn’t happen in Kill Zone 2.

In spite of things being so inactive, there are actually a lot moving parts. However, most of it is in need of some smoothing out in order to make it coherent. When you read the official synopsis, you see what could make it interesting for some people, but you can also see why it doesn’t work as it should. As a person who wanted to like this, that leaves me disappointed.

If you’re watching Kill Zone 2, you’re probably watching for the action that I touched on earlier. If that’s the case, you’ll probably be happy with what you have here when it’s on-screen. When it’s there, it’s good and sometimes innovative, but everything thing surrounding it is unfortunately a jumbled up distraction.

It’s not so surprising when I say that the movie picks up once the action does. The second half provides that with two big action sequences filling up most of it, while the first half lags behind badly. For even the biggest action fans, I’m unable to recommend Kill Zone 2. Drastically reducing the amount of story or making a more substantial effort to greatly improve it would likely have me saying the opposite.

Rating: Not Rated

Director: Soi Cheang

Cast:
Tony Jaa
Wu Jing
Simon Yam
Zhang Jin
Louis Koo

Film Length: 118 minutes

Release Date: May 12, 2016 (Limited)

Distributor: Well Go USA

  • 4/10
    Score - 4/10
4/10
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