Nam and his gang opens a new club and Chicken who was in exile in Taiwan for a while managed to climb the ranks in the Taiwan Triads for the San Luen gang. Bee who was Nam's boss is gone and someone is to inherit his assets, and Nam has to compete with another Triad member named Tai Fai in order to see who can make more money and the one who wins and gets to inherit Bee. Later, the San Luen gang tries to enlist Hung Hing's support in a Macau casino. When the latter declines, violence ensues. Soon Chicken must decide which side he's on.
Young and Dangerous Part II kicks off a few days after where Young and Dangerous left off, something that seems really good if you watch the movies in a row. This sequel stand on its own but it's of course best to have seen the first movie before watching this one as it uses many of the same characters. Although a new characters is introduced, a man who wants to lead, just like Nam, played by Anthony Wong who always is fun to watch. He's quite disgusting here, constantly picking his nose among other disgusting things, but it makes for a lot of fun moments.
This time the movie has more story to it than the original movie had, it's more complicated and there are more things to keep track off. It tells a side story as well about Chicken who left for Taiwan in the first movie, and what happened to him during the time he was there. Apart from the side story, the whole movie this time focus on Chicken and this time we get some more character development when it comes to his person. But it's not all about Chicken, most of the characters are interesting and some new guy called Banana Skin joins Nam's gang, although we don't get to see too much of him.
Young and Dangerous 2 has much less fighting scenes than what the original movie had, and even though we get a lot more storywise here, I still found the lack of fights to be a bit boring. The first movie never really slowed down, and every time it was on the edge of doing so, there was some action element that came alive to save the viewer from boredom. I have absolutely nothing against a good story and more drama, it's just that you got a certain feeling from the first movie and that same feeling wasn't really present when watched the sequel. It's still a good follow-up though and has a lot of interesting things to it.
Another thing is that the first movie was pretty straight forward, somewhat predictable but still super entertaining. What's different here is that it's no longer straight forward at all as Young and Dangerous 2 delivers a few surprises, twists and like I said before, has much more to it storywise. Personally I think that even though I found this movie to be quite interesting and a good follow-up, the one thing that definitely saved it was that Wong was brought in. His character is really obnoxious and it was always fun to see what he would do next.
A bit different compared to the original but still makes for a good sequel. A great thing is that it takes off just where the first one left off, and that they've used most of the original characters as well. Anthony Wong lifts this movie up a little extra with a colourfull performance, and the movie has much more to it storywise than the first one had. Although this is both positive and negative, and it does not have as much great action as the original movie had. Worth checking out if you liked Young and Dangerous.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Goo waak chai ji maang lung goh kong
MOVIE YEAR: 1996
DIRECTOR: Wai Keung Lau
WRITING CREDITS: Manfred Wong
GENRE: Crime, Action, Drama, Triad
CAST: Ekin Cheng, Jordan Chan, Gigi Lai
COUNTRY: Hong Kong
RUNTIME: 100 min
RATING: 6/10
Young and Dangerous Part II Website/IMDB Click here
Young and Dangerous Part II Trailer Click here
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