The China O'Brien franchise began when film company Golden Harvest decided to make Cynthia Rothrock a bigger star in America. They hired director Robert Clouse and shot back-to-back the movie and its sequel. The first movie was a good addition to the action film genre, but it wasn't anything truly special. Let's see how this sequel fares.
China (Rothrock) is doing some good work as the new Sheriff of Beaver Creek, but the quiet town gets shaken by the appearance of a drug kingpin that uses it as a hideout. So China must get back in gear and fight more criminals.
It's basically a perfect continuation of the first movie. By that I mean that it's just as clumsy and competent to the same degree as the last one, with the same kind of flaws and good moments overall. However, the fights are less dynamic, less exciting, and the drama isn't as refreshing because now we have the same generic dialogue sequences that have less of an impact because it's more of the same.
With a lot of padding, silly deviations from the main plot, crazy moments that come out of nowhere (like the striptease at the start), this sequel brings everything down a few notches by not adding a whole lot new (some sequences are so similar and so disposable that you could splice them into the first movie without much trouble, there's even a flashback that reuses some footage from the first one as filler) and offering weaker versions of scenes we already saw before.
I will say, however, that even with these flaws, you do kind of get to have a better grip on who these characters are and you also get some sweet moments of China and her friends continuing their life at Beaver Creek, which is neat. None of this saves the film overall and it's not a huge part of the movie, but the local regional charm is there.
Only really recommended for those who already love the first China O'Brien movie and want to see more of action in that vein, and even for those who are Rothrock completists. This one is average but the fact that it is a direct sequel is actually sort of remarkable in the career of Rothrock and even the one from other martial artists.
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