Director Jackie Chan’s Project A 2 doesn’t live up to 1983’s pirate-laden original, mainly due to a period-piece setting that bogs down the story like a wet blanket.

Returning as super sailor Dragon Mao, Chan is recruited by the government to go undercover to expose a crooked inspector who stages his own arrests and murders the innocent. Meanwhile, Dragon’s being hunted by the pirates he defeated in the first film, although this is really just a weak throwaway link in order to justify the addition of a numeral to the title.

The first two-thirds of Project A 2 are heavy with dull dialogue, although it occasionally comes alive with an action scene, like when Chan and another man are handcuffed to one another and chased by half a dozen hatchet-wielding baddies. The final 20 minutes or so almost redeem the picture, with an extended set piece involving a giant hamster wheel, chili peppers and a toppling facade (a famous nod to Buster Keaton).

Ultimately, however, the sequel suffers from the same problem as Chan’s Miracles, a 1989 film set in the 1930s: too much period, not enough exclamation. —Rod Lott

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In his directorial debut, Wu-Tang Clan leader RZA distills what’s so enjoyable about 1970s kung-fu films into one spectacular, outlandish romp — a greatest-hits collection of Black Belt Theater fare. In turn, story is secondary to the all-out circus of slaughter, if not incidental altogether. Revenge is the name of The Man with the Iron Fists’ game.

RZA himself stars as the blacksmith of Jungle Village, whose governor has been killed for his gold by the wild-maned Silver Lion (Byron Mann, TV’s Arrow) and Bronze Lion (Cung Le, True Legend). The governor’s son, Zen Yi (Rick Yune, Die Another Day), returns to town to avenge his father’s death; rolling in about the same time is Jack Knife (Russell Crowe, Gladiator), a bloated bloke who practically sets up an alcohol-doused residence among the whores of the bordello run by Madam Blossom (Lucy Liu, Kill Bill).

That’s far more setup than the film needs. With all the chess pieces in place — and they number many more — RZA delights in having them knock each other down with feet and fists of fury, and specially crafted weapons that make the flying guillotine look like a Cracker Jack prize by comparison. He doesn’t skimp on their end result, either: the blood. Paying proper homage, it spurts in geysers.

With booby traps, mirror mazes and sound-effects stings, the whole affair could be considered tongue-in-cheek if said cheek weren’t already sliced open and said tongue already yanked out. This exercise in “hi-ya!” is anything but ho-hum. —Rod Lott

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Directed and “scriped” by its star Bruce Lee, The Way of the Dragon sends Tang Lung (Lee) from Hong Kong to Rome to help protect the Chinese restaurant of a friend’s niece from a steady barrage of neighborhood thugs. Upon arriving in Rome, he dines at the airport lounge, where he eats five soups! This makes him need to go potty! Two times!

No sooner as he reaches the troubled restaurant than the hooligans appear, trying to cajole the owner into selling the land. One of the bad guys looks like an über-feminine Pinocchio. Tang beats them all up, but they just keep coming back for more. And when he takes off his shirt, boy, he means business.

Eventually, the big boss gets wise and hires an American karate expert named Colt to take Tang out. Colt is played by a very hairy and paunchy Chuck Norris, who — let’s face it — was destined to play guys named Colt. He and Lee spar like lightning in the Colisseum, which is really something to see. After Enter the Dragon, this effort — aka Return of the Dragon — may be Lee’s most enjoyable movie. —Rod Lott

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Leave it to schlock director Al Adamson (Satan’s Sadists) to merge the kung-fu and blaxploitation genres with The Dynamite Brothers, marketed as the first movie of its kind to pair a black and Asian lead. Timothy Brown (aka M*A*S*H’s Spearchucker) is Stud Brown, “the black cat from Watts,” while Alan Tang is Larry Chin, “the kung fu cat from Hong Kong.”

No sooner has Chin arrived in San Francisco than he’s handcuffed by the cops to Stud, if only to allow the characters to meet cute and then bond as they escape and run around the woods like so many Defiant Ones.

The duo gets mixed up in a drug war too complicated for the film to adequately explain. Needless to say, the cop after them (Aldo Ray, The Centerfold Girls) is racist and corrupt, and James Hong (Blade Runner) plays a narcotics kingpin who kills his enemies with an acupuncture needle. The final confrontation takes place at Hong’s castle, if only so several henchman can fall from it.

One poor guy gets his scalp ripped off; a mute girl gets her face mutilated with a straight razor; and several honky bitches get naked. Dynamite is more competent than the usual Adamson fare, and comes complete with a groovy, ass-shakin’, jazz-funk soundtrack and a wild, Pop Art, quasi-animated title sequence. —Rod Lott

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Good ’n’ bloody ’n’ cheap, the martial-arts movie Shaolin vs. Manchu begins with a five-minute introduction of all the various Shaolin kung fu styles. Only then do we get to the (as the uproarious trailer puts it) “excellentent plot,” in which the young monk with the entirely indigenous name of Rocky (Ling Man-hoi) is selected to be the Shaolin temple’s new chief abbot.

This move pisses someone off, so Rocky is wrongly accused of rape and thrown out of the monastery with broken feet, but only after a nighttime attack by ninjas, one of whom has an exposed butt crack. It’s all a setup by one of the crooked prince’s spies, of course, so Rocky must clear his good name, oust the evil abbot and retrieve the Shaolin’s stolen relics.

Does he succeed? You know the answer. But I bet you didn’t know a Manchu warrior gets drunk to the point where he dumps a bowl of greens on his head and laughs about it. C’mon, admit it. —Rod Lott

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