Bullet Points: Blood Ring 2
Putting an action star behind bars has been a winning formula in Hollywood for decades. They locked up Steve McQueen in The Great Escape. Clint Eastwood was in and out of the hoosegow in Escape from Alcatraz. Later, Jean-Claude Van Damme would continue the prison tradition in Death Warrant.
The 1990’s proved that DTV action stars weren’t safe from incarceration. Don “The Dragon” Wilson was thrown in the slammer in Bloodfist III: Forced to Fight, David Bradley served hard time in Hard Justice and Dale “Apollo” Cook would experience life behind bars in 1995’s Blood Ring 2…
- Flashback: Blood Ring 2 begins with a flashback to the final fight from 1991’s Blood Ring between Max Rivers (Dale “Apollo” Cook, Triple Impact) and Don Carlio (Don Nekaya Neilsen, Fist of Steel). The flashback isn’t just the end of the Rivers/Carlio fight, it isn’t just highlights of the Rivers/Carlio fight, it is the ENTIRE final fight from Blood Ring. After that stroll down memory lane, we see that Max Rivers was charged for the murder of Don Carlio and he was found guilty… maybe the jury watched the full flashback too.
- Behind Bars: It’s off to prison for Max Rivers, who arrives in slow motion… further padding the already short 83 minute runtime. Max gets some catcalls, then he is hosed down, then it’s mug shot time (which seems like that should have happened much earlier in the process, but maybe the prison has a yearbook, makes a friend in the form of Swede and last but not least, Max meets Warden Collantes (Ted Markland, Live by the Fist). Collantes believes that Max acted in self-defense and shouldn’t have been found guilty, but there’s nothing he can do about that. However, he could make Max’s stay at the prison as enjoyable as possible IF Max is willing to fight for him… Max is not interested. And that’s going to lead to Max being “tested” over and over again. Getting dragged out of bed in the middle of night, getting challenged while doing hard labor in the quarry, Max even finds himself fighting in the prison kitchen. In between the fights, Max has more flashbacks to Blood Ring… I think if all the flashback scenes were removed from Blood Ring 2, you would have 41 minutes of new footage.
- Escape Plan: Linda Conroy (Lisa Stevens, Rumble in the Bronx) is the lawyer working on Max’s appeal. During their first meeting, Linda tells Max she is going to get him out of prison “no matter what” and she wasn’t lying. Linda is also very forthcoming with Max when she realizes his appeal is going nowhere so she helps Max escape from prison! After rendezvousing with Linda at her hotel, Max and Linda soon find themselves on the run from Collantes’ right hand man/ head prison guard, Garcia, and his underlings. It is obvious that Collantes is not going to take Max’s no for an answer.
- Living Lavish: It’s not easy, but Garcia delivers Max and Linda to Collantes at his palatial estate. Collantes is hosting the underground fights and has $2 million dollars riding on Max. If Max doesn’t fight for him, Collantes will kill Linda… which gives us the classic “forced to fight” scenario. Collantes gets his way for a bit, until Max gets a hold of a rifle from one of the many security guards on the premises. This unexpected turn of events has Collantes scrambling… but Collantes still has Linda as a pawn in this game. Also unexpected was for the movie’s final fight to have an industrial backdrop… including damsel in distress Linda hanging from a giant hook. Once Collantes accepts that he has been defeated he attempts to escape via helicopter and you can probably guess how that ends for ol’ skullet head Collantes.
The movies of Dale “Apollo” Cook never set the action movie world on fire upon their release, nor were they designed to. I would not call any of Cook’s movies great (Triple Impact has been the best one that I’ve seen), but they have all been serviceable… even Blood Ring 2, heavily relying on flashback footage from Blood Ring, had enough original (albeit cliche) content to quench the thirst of low budget action lovers the world over.
If you are thirsty for some Bonus Bullet Points, allow me to quench that thirst…
- AKA: Blood Ring 2 was released as Bloodfight 6 in Germany. Bloodfight 5.5 would have been a more accurate title given the amount of recycled footage that was used.
- If You Ever: …wanted to see Dale “Apollo” Cook peel potatoes, then Blood Ring 2 is the movie for you.
- For Real, For Real: Blood Ring 2 was written by the Real Jim Gaines, a freakin’ icon in the world of cheaply made action movies.
