Kill Zone 2 | A martial-arts epic with melodrama and mayhem

Kill Zone 2
(Image credit: © Signature Entertainment)

Kill Zone 2

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

Don’t get hung up over the absurdly over-cooked plot – which shuttles back and forth between Hong Kong and Bangkok and concerns the entwined fates of a Thai prison guard (Tony Jaa) and the undercover Hong Kong cop (Jing Wu) who turns out to be a bone marrow match for the guard's dying daughter. (The story, incidentally, has nothing to do with the film’s 2005 predecessor).

Kill Zone 2 Tony Jaa Jing Wu

But do brace yourself for some truly astonishing action. And if your eyes are not already out on stalks at the furious prison-riot scene - which sees Jing’s cop desperately trying to get a phone signal in the midst of the mayhem, just wait till you get to the film’s ferocious finale at the top of a sleek penthouse, where the stylishly shot and stunningly choreographed mass battle is set to the elegant strains of Mozart’s Requiem and Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

Certificate 15. Runtime 118 mins. Director Cheang Pou-Soi

Kill Zone 2 (aka SPL 2: A Time for Consequences) debuts on Sky Cinema Premiere on Wednesday 5 April. Available on DVD from Precision Pictures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyAqapaJlFU

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.