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think it goes without saying that a movie called
"Python 2" is bad. Even for a Straight-to-Video movie, a class of
picture that is usually synonymous with the word "bad movie",
"Python 2" takes the cake.
Essentially about a giant python snake created by the Evil
U.S. Government for Evil Intentions, the python snake is captured by a joint
American-Russian operation somewhere in Russia. (Why it's loose in the first
place, or how it got to Russia, is a total mystery.) Interestingly, the cave
where the snake happens to be slithering around also happens to be the same cave
where a dragon used to roam in "Dragon
Fighter", another STV victim. (Actually, a lot of the same locations
and props used here were also used in "Dragon
Fighter".) After a series of absurd and wholly uninteresting plot
points, the python ends up in a Russian military base where it gets loose, and
the American Government sends an Untrustworthy CIA Spook to recover it.
It's movies like "Python 2" that makes me not
care if I write a full (i.e. proper) review or not. I mean, folks, this movie is
just bad. The editing is atrocious and continuity doesn't exist in this
film. The direction by L.A. McConnell is incompetent and borders on amateurish.
McConnell seems more concern with throwing in as many "Reservoir
Dogs"-like slow motion moments (you know, the scene where tough guys walk
"coolly" to and fro?) than he is about shooting a coherent film. (I
wonder what "L.A." stands for? Or better yet, I wonder if I could care
any less?)
The big star of "Python 2" is of course the big
snake. The snake is all CGI, which may explain how the creature goes from being
the size of a man one moment to the size of a truck the next and only to morph
into the size of a bloody skyscraper later on. To be honest, the film worked
better when writer Jeff Rank was making us "imagine" what the python
looked like in the beginning by having characters run around shooting at
nothing. Of course this doesn't exactly explain how the python managed to use a
flamethrower to disable a truck's tire, but I guess we're not supposed to think
about those sorts of things.
William Zabka, who apparently was also in the original
"Python" and didn't learn his lesson, is the Untrustworthy CIA Spook
that entices married couple Dwight (Dana Ashbrook) and Nalia (Simmone Mackinnon)
to help him retrieve the snake. Now why would a U.S. Government agent working on
foreign soil recruit an ex-baseball player like Dwight and his Russian wife to
help in a most important recovery mission? Why, because they own a truck! Well,
that makes perfect sense to me. Besides offering little reason to exist in the
movie except to mope about how he once hit some guy in the head with a baseball
during a game, Dwight is pretty much a non-entity, although this doesn't explain
why we spend so much time with him and his emotional problems.
Lack of proper characters aside, "Python 2" is
nevertheless good for a laugh. The film is essentially a Teen Slasher movie,
with the python taking on Superninja like qualities since it can be anywhere the
film calls for without any regard to the laws of space-time. And oh, I also
believe that at one point the snake can fly, thus breaking gravity laws
as well.
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