Five years after thwarting a government conspiracy involving the murder of his girlfriend, Australian Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown), a former designer of movie special effects, has carved out a new life creating expensive mechanised toys and living with new love Kim (Total Recall's Rachel Ticotin) and her son Chris (Dominic Zamprogna). Things are going well until Kim's ex-husband cop Mike asks for help in snaring a dangerous rapist. Rollie agrees and once more conjures movie magic to make the trap look genuine. Unfortunately, it goes wrong and Mike is killed, and Rollie discovers it was an inside job. Worse - the bad guys know this and want him and Kim dead. With friend and former NYPD detective Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) in tow, Rollie investigates a plot involving antique gold medallions, corrupt cops and a multi-million dollar Mafia deal. He will need all of his technological know-how and shrewd survival tactics to keep his new family safe.
This sequel came five years after 1986's F/X: Murder By Illusion, a modest hit at the box office but an even bigger one on the home video market. Producer Dodi Fayed (who would, of course, die tragically with Princess Diana) returned alongside Brown, while the script was written by Bill Condon, a future Oscar winner of such impressively diverse films as Chicago, Mr Holmes, the last two Twilight films, Kinsey and The Greatest Showman. Although it initially opened at number one, the film failed to have any continued success and reviews weren't particularly kind. It's still, though, a worthy follow-up and sure to please fans of the first one.
Sequels usually take what worked in the original and repeat it more broadly, and that's precisely what happens here, right down to the elderly lawman turning coat for millions (which can only make you question the paucity of police pensions), the guerrilla war finale, and a welcome re-appearance from computer whiz Marisa Velez (Jossie DeGuzman). Most importantly, of course, we see Rollie cook up even more ingeniously inventive traps - literally, during a stand-out supermarket chase, when baked beans prove every bit a dangerous as natural uranium. There's also an original - or, at least, "different" - fight involving an imitative robot clown.
It's all jolly japes, and the Vatican medallions give it a mild National Treasure flavour, but the premise seems a little tired by the end. In giving the hero a distinctively technological approach to combat, as opposed to letting him use his fists, the script paints itself into a corner. Rollie goes out of his way to set traps for anonymous henchmen when a swift knock on the bonce would be simpler. (Perhaps he's a pacifist, but what this man can do with an aerosol spray would impress MacGyver.) At one point, we're expected to believe he has previously infiltrated the villain's heavily-guarded house in order to set traps which shall enable him to infiltrate it a second time. It's a paradox worthy of Doctor Who. (Another head-scratcher is the absence of the fifteen million dollars Rollie and Leo stole at the end of the first film and their subsequent escape into the Swiss Alps. They're now both back in New York so clearly aren't fugitives, and while we may assume that Rollie bought his fancy loft apartment with his half of the money, he still works for a living. Leo, meanwhile, despite owning a defunct bar, has to makes ends meet as a private detective specialising in divorce cases.)
The film climaxes with a couple of neat gadgets shrewdly seeded at the beginning, a minor twist concerning the medallions, and an unexpectedly comic ending for the main bad guy. I don't understand why it wasn't as warmly received as the first film, as they're both very good. The premise is solid, like an adult, city-wide Home Alone. Though I'd have thought two films were enough, a television series based on the films began in 1998 and ran for two seasons.
This sequel came five years after 1986's F/X: Murder By Illusion, a modest hit at the box office but an even bigger one on the home video market. Producer Dodi Fayed (who would, of course, die tragically with Princess Diana) returned alongside Brown, while the script was written by Bill Condon, a future Oscar winner of such impressively diverse films as Chicago, Mr Holmes, the last two Twilight films, Kinsey and The Greatest Showman. Although it initially opened at number one, the film failed to have any continued success and reviews weren't particularly kind. It's still, though, a worthy follow-up and sure to please fans of the first one.
Sequels usually take what worked in the original and repeat it more broadly, and that's precisely what happens here, right down to the elderly lawman turning coat for millions (which can only make you question the paucity of police pensions), the guerrilla war finale, and a welcome re-appearance from computer whiz Marisa Velez (Jossie DeGuzman). Most importantly, of course, we see Rollie cook up even more ingeniously inventive traps - literally, during a stand-out supermarket chase, when baked beans prove every bit a dangerous as natural uranium. There's also an original - or, at least, "different" - fight involving an imitative robot clown.
It's all jolly japes, and the Vatican medallions give it a mild National Treasure flavour, but the premise seems a little tired by the end. In giving the hero a distinctively technological approach to combat, as opposed to letting him use his fists, the script paints itself into a corner. Rollie goes out of his way to set traps for anonymous henchmen when a swift knock on the bonce would be simpler. (Perhaps he's a pacifist, but what this man can do with an aerosol spray would impress MacGyver.) At one point, we're expected to believe he has previously infiltrated the villain's heavily-guarded house in order to set traps which shall enable him to infiltrate it a second time. It's a paradox worthy of Doctor Who. (Another head-scratcher is the absence of the fifteen million dollars Rollie and Leo stole at the end of the first film and their subsequent escape into the Swiss Alps. They're now both back in New York so clearly aren't fugitives, and while we may assume that Rollie bought his fancy loft apartment with his half of the money, he still works for a living. Leo, meanwhile, despite owning a defunct bar, has to makes ends meet as a private detective specialising in divorce cases.)
The film climaxes with a couple of neat gadgets shrewdly seeded at the beginning, a minor twist concerning the medallions, and an unexpectedly comic ending for the main bad guy. I don't understand why it wasn't as warmly received as the first film, as they're both very good. The premise is solid, like an adult, city-wide Home Alone. Though I'd have thought two films were enough, a television series based on the films began in 1998 and ran for two seasons.