2013 ill-advised sequel
Bad Movie Rating: 3/5 (Johnny: 4/5; Samantha: 2/5; Josh: 4/5; Mark: 3/5)
Rating: 6/20
Plot: Nearly identical to its predecessor except the main characters are 27 years older.
This is a movie for anybody who wants to see Deadly Prey but with senior citizens. Jonesin' for some geriatric fight sequences? Want to see guys who would look more natural at a retirement party than in an action movie running around the woods and playing army man? Want to see what might as well have been a shot-for-shot remake but where everybody seems really tired? Well, this sequel is the movie for you!
It's a bland action film. David Prior is back at the helm, and brother Ted Prior, although he's most definitely aged, looks to be in fairly good shape. It's a little painful watching him run, and a lot of his fight sequences do seem like they're in slow motion, but he's still a convincing enough bad ass to make this almost work. His locks are gone, and he keeps his shirt on, but he still is capable in his mid-50s of Rambo-ing it up, setting booby-traps and grunting and punching guys in the head. He also seems a little too tired to growl out all his lines like he did in the first movie.
David Campbell's antagonist Colonel Hogan returns (from the dead?) to get his revenge, and he does growl out all his lines. He looks a little worse for wear than his nemesis, but his teeth must be stronger as he spends the entire movie chewing up the scenery. Hogan spent the intervening years between the first movie and this one in prison, so I was completely wrong about him being dead. Now, if he winds up in a third movie--a movie that I can't see anybody allowing to happen--it'll be fucking miraculous.
Other characters: There's a new wife for our hero, and he's got a son who is played by Prior's son. I don't know which Prior fathered the kid, but he's definitely a Prior. You don't even need to check the credits to see that. All you have to do is watch the freeze-frame at the end, and you'll say, "Yep, that kid's a Prior." Actually, I'm fairly positive he'll be the protagonist of Deadly Prey 3, which I imagine will be called Even Deadlier Than Deadliest Prey: Spawn of Danton.
If you've seen Deadly Prey, you likely remember Danton's hair, a freeze frame, and a scene where he rips off a guy's arm and beats him to death with it. That character's brother is in this, wearing mirrored sunglasses that I could have sworn I saw the film crew reflected in at one point. And guess what? He has his arm hacked off and then is beaten with it. I guess David Prior is from the if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it school of filmmaking.
There's a female villain in this, a completely extraneous character who I assume was squeezed into the proceedings to convince the fellows watching that there might be some nudity at some point if they persevere through the redundancy of watching old guys chase each other past the same trees over and over again. She's played by Tara Kleinpeter, and I thought she looked like a Muppet.
I guess it's the lips.
Finally, there are a trio of characters who I can only assume were in this because the thing was crowd-sourced and they donated enough money to get roles. They play gamers who end up watching all of this action unfold on the Internet and decide to try to help Danton out. None of the three are good, but Suki-Rose Simakis gives the performance that her friends are going to make fun of her for if they ever find out she was in this. The script doesn't help as she's required to say "True that" about twenty times. Unless those "true thats" were improvised.
Fans of the original '87 action Rambo rip-off will likely want to give this a try, but it's not as much fun as that one and suffers from having no original ideas at all. It tries to duplicate the accidental good-bad magic of its predecessor, and although it seems like an entirely earnest affair, it just suffers from being more of the same. But with old farts.
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