Perfectly adorable
Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.
View MoreThe movie runs out of plot and jokes well before the end of a two-hour running time, long for a light comedy.
View MoreThe movie really just wants to entertain people.
This is an awesome action film with great performances by Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy. Its fast paced action packed and full of great special f/x hence the name. I started to hear about this movie and f/x 1 about a year ago and it sounded interesting so a few months ago I went to fye and bought it and I loved it. I recommend this and F/X to all action fans. F/X is available on 1 DVD and 1 blue-ray and F/X2 is available on 1 DVD. You can find them for cheap on ebay. Although this film is underrated I think it is really awesome and that action fans would love this. If you like the movies there is also a TV series. FX2 is also known as the Deadly Art of Illusion so if you find a movie under that title it is FX2.
View MoreYou 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.
View MoreF/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.
View MorePeople who prefer coherent stories shouldn't even touch F/X2 with a pole of any length. But those who can browse through books for the scenes with action might enjoy F/X2. The plot is secondary, like the plots of street fighting video games like Tekken or Killer Instinct. This plot only serves to link all the special effects together, so F/X2 becomes more than a random montage of clever escapes and neat toys, all engineered by the main character Rollie, who is a former special effects creator played in the most charismatic way possible by Bryan Brown.Despite the sparse plot, the escapes and the toys really are fun to watch, especially the famous supermarket scene and the strange creation Bluey the Clown. The "witty banter" between the characters is pretty much survivable. But under no circumstances should a person attempt to pay close attention to this movie. The narrow escapes may be fun and showy to watch (the main character is a special effects engineer, after all), but the getting there is pretty tedious. Distract yourself along the way: fold the laundry, hold a cocktail party, balance your checkbook, or browse the Internet, and just pay attention again during the fun bits. You won't be missing much in between.
View More