Kill Zone 2 (Saat po long 2)

If you like action films, you need to see "Kill Zone 2."

Mostly, just as "SPL" did with Yen, this sequel serves as an ideal showcase for talented martial artists.

If there's one rewarding thing about many Hong Kong action directors, it's that they rarely dawdle in getting to what fight fans have come for: bracing shootouts and high-impact fisticuffs and footwork.

What makes Kill Zone 2 remarkable is the head-pounding martial-arts action, a ballet of brutality that makes up in murderous choreography what it lacks in narrative cohesion. No one goes to a movie called Kill Zone 2 for plot anyway.

Cheang keeps the movie in a state of exaggerated emotion; it opens with the choral "Lacrimosa" from Mozart's Requiem and a slow-mo shot tinted arterial red, and rarely lets up from there.

Ultimately the story is secondary to the action, which rarely lets up and never lets viewers down.

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

With fierce action, impressive acting, and a compelling storyline, Kill Zone 2 is the first worthy Tony Jaa film to come along since The Protector.

Its very foundation is built on coincidences, which add excess density to an already dense narrative. But Cheang keeps the threads straight, which is as impressive a feat as any of his film's stunts.

Stylistically free but still cleanly delineated in character and crime-film structure, there comes a clear direction for the 21st-century action film.

Unlike certain recent Hong Kong movies that got bogged down in moralizing... Kill Zone 2 delivers the goods in this post-Raid environment.