F/X2 (1991)

Everyone has one or two films which they know in their heart of hearts isn't a great film, maybe not even an average one but for whatever reason it crawls inside your head and wont let go. You just can't help but love it and this is one of mine. The acting is OK, the story idea is kind of cool if a little un-believable, the bad guys are inept (why doesn't anyone just shoot the guy!) but none of it matters I love this film.

Bryan Brown is excellent as the FX Man on the run and Brian Denehhey is up to his usual standards as good backup. It's a fun run from start to finish if you sit back and let it go this is a great way to pass 95mins. The FX tricks employed are clever and gosh darn it there's a happy ending maybe i'm just sentimental!! I hope more people see this film I highly recommend it, now i'm off to write a review of my other guilty pleasure the Secret of My Success.....

8/10

Fmovies: You can only appreciate this sequel if you saw the first one as there are so many references to it. Whereas the first one was quirky, original and well produced this one isn't. It's just OK.

There are too many silly behaviours and plot holes to mention like leaving the killer to get up and walk away for no good reason when they could easily have got him. Plus its full of the usual clichés. The two actors are wasted in a film with much lower production costs. It looks and feels a bit cheap. Even the so called special effects aren't up to much.

The actors work well together but I think Dennehy is the one that adds character and depth and saves the film.

So all in all a disappointment. I'll be watching the first one again sometime but not this one.

The original F/X was a moderately successful movie. It certainly wasn't anything great but it did have unmistakable quirkiness in regards to how it approached the action genre. This sequel took five years to follow it, which does seem quite slow by the standards of the day. It teamed up the duo of Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy again, the former playing the lead character, special effects artist Rollie Tyler.

The film opens once again with another amusing opening that turns out to be a film-within-a-film, featuring a transvestite alien lunatic. The story kicks into gear when Rollie's police detective friend is killed on a sting he was roped into. He has evidence of foul play though, so he joins forces with his private investigator buddy to get to the bottom of the conspiracy. Truthfully, the story is not very good and ultimately is only there to serve as a means to connect various action and jovial banter scenes together. In fairness, like the first movie, there are some entertainingly different action scenes to enjoy. Especially good was the robot clown fight, which was a refreshingly different way to approach an action movie punch up; also amusing was the shop sequence where the bad guy is finally dispatched when he has his head mechanically cellophaned like a supermarket chicken! But all-in-all, irrespective of these occasional original moments, F/X 2: The Deadly Art of Illusion is nothing to get too excited about. It's a passably entertaining action flick and no more really.

F/X2 fmovies. The glaring shortcoming of F/X 2 is that the main thrust of the plot, i.e. the what and why of the baddies, is not revealed until an hour or so into the film. At 109 minutes, that's well over half-way. Certainly the point was to pop our main character, Rollie Tyler (reprised by Bryan Brown from the first movie), into a life and death situation beyond his comprehension, and not until several clues are followed revealed that he (and we) find out what these circumstances are.

Briefly, Rollie, the Australian special effects wizard, is hired again by the FBI to aid in cornering a serial killer. However, the plan goes awry when the FBI man who was supposed to stop the suspect in his tracks is killed by another unknown killer. Rollie finds himself also caught in a web of intrigue. And of course, when he is on the verge of getting snuffed out, Dennehy as Leo McCarthy pops in to save his ass. Not a bad opening, all things considered.

Finally, Leo uncovers the back story, which I won't reveal, lest I be accused of "giving it away" as they say. However, the back story is described almost offhandedly, without even a flashback. Unfortunately, the downside is that, with very little screen time left, neither the history of what's behind the bad guys' motivations nor the bad guys themselves are ever fully developed. I found myself wanting to know more about the circumstances surrounding this back story, the what and the why. Of course, with these kinds of movies, a lot of screen time must be devoted to the baddies chasing the innocent by-standers in shopping malls or in car chases. I guess it's a Hollywood law that American filmmakers must devote a specified minimum amount of time to choreographed running around and shooting so they can legitimately call their project an "action movie".

Still the film has its entertainment value. There is a strange chemistry that exists between Brian Dennehy (reprising his role has Leo McCarthy) and Bryan Brown, and again I wish that had been milked for all its worth. Of course, the most entertaining sequence, like the first installment, is the use of movie effects to thwart the bad guys, which works very well. Maybe I appreciated it as a breath of fresh air from the typical cat and mouse chase with automatic weapons that typically climaxes most of these kinds of films.

Still very much in the style of a 1980's action movie, although this was 1991, with the typical rock songs spliced in for good measure. With the exception of the use of the special effects against the baddies at the finale, story-wise it is really the equivalent of a two-part episode of "Simon and Simon" with a larger budget.

F/X 2 turned out to be a better sequel that I was expecting, as a result of what I had heard people say about it over the years. I was glad to see Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy share more scenes together this time around (they only had one in the first film), and I was also surprised that the story was pretty good, in the same league as the first. Sure, some parts were predictable (nearly every film has got some predictability to it), but for the most part, it was nicely-paced with some good suspense and mystery. I was hoping for a better usage of special effects by the characters (after all, the series is called F/X), but Brown pretty much just MacGyvers his way through the film, especially in the supermarket sequence, one of the film's standout scenes. My personal favorite was the scene in Brown's apartment, where he uses an animatronic remote-controlled clown to handle an assassin (who, like Cliff DeYoung in the first film, mysteriously vanishes from the movie without a trace), and the battle at the mansion at the end of the film is pretty exciting, with Brown making use of a bunch of effects equipment to stop the bad guys. All-in-all, a pretty decent sequel that has me torn between which of the two films I like more. I really can't decide. I know it's been eleven years, and since this one apparently didn't perform as well at the box office as the first one did, I doubt we'll ever see an F/X 3, but I wouldn't mind seeing it.

Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is no longer in the movies. He's now a toymaker with a girlfriend named Kim Brandon (Rachel Ticotin). Her ex-husband NYPD detective Mike Brandon asks him to use his skills to help catch a killer. As the other cops go off to take down the suspect, a mysterious assassin kills Mike. Rollie records Lt. Ray Silak tampering with the murder weapon. The assassin tracks down Rollie and Leo McCarthy (Brian Dennehy) saves him in the nick of time.

The most memorable thing in this movie is Rollie's man-size mechanical clown with a control bodysuit. It's a double-edge sword. It's fun at first but Rollie looks sillier and sillier with the control suit. In fact, a lot of this movie is pretty silly. A lot of the traps are reminiscent of "Home Alone" with chemicals and bigger tech.

Along with all the gadgetry, one of the things that Rollie is known for is his avoidance of guns. He's a MacGyver in that way. However this can go too far. In one scene, he grabs the assassin's gun in the aquarium while he's being drowned. Then for some reason he leaves it behind for the assassin to pick up and shoot at him. It's annoying when smart characters do stupid things. This is simply inferior to the original. It's not as much fun. It is sillier and not as compelling. It's not terrible but it's not good.