Review of Maniac Cop 2 (1990) by Cory T — 11 Oct 2014

Like most propulsive action pictures, the sordidly jaunty 'Maniac Cop 2' starts with an in media action extravaganza that recaps the first film and it barrels forward with a brute-force velocity that totally supersedes its ignoble predecessor.

From the onset, the cinematography is more burnished with the camera gliding through a squad car graveyard until it lands on Matt Cordell's (Robert Z'Dar) phantom mode of transportation. A morbid monologue from a blind newsstand proprietor is a shrewdly written deduction for psychologist Susan Riley's (Claudia Christian) investigation.

Bar none, the stuntwork is not feigned and action junkies can rejoice at their balletic resilience (ex. In an unbroken shot, a felon vaults out of a fire escape and onto the roof of a van before rolling onto the asphalt).

A car chase with a taxicab on its rims is a humdinger and then it's followed with an even more nail-biting scene with Christian handcuffed to the steering column of a car in neutral. In the tradition of Janet Leigh, loose-end protagonists are slain within the first quarter.

Robert Davi is his flinty best and Leo Rossi (with the bearded simulacrum of a deadly Grizzly Adams) is rabidly teeth-gnashing as the serial killer Turkell. Turkell's misalliance with Cordell is akin to the loquacious weasel Buscemi and the tacit psychopath Stormare in 'Fargo'.

Somehow a zombie Cordell nonchalantly shambling through door frames in a precinct shootout is fodder for a dynamic action sequence. In quintessential slasher movie fashion, a Molotov cocktail can't stymie Cordell's spree and his flame-engulfed rampage through Sing Sing is utterly dazzling.

No delusions of loftiness here; 'Maniac Cop 2' is a rarefied sequel that simply sizzles above the ashes of the original.