apparently not enough women saw the first one

Rating: 4/10 (16 May 2003)

I bought tickets two days ahead of time. I waited outside for 30 min just to get crappy seats. I sat through the trailers and suffered through the over-crowded theater. And for what? To sit through a special-effects-induced Cadillac advertisement with way too many forced 'lovey-dovey' scenes added in as filler. This movie was a disappointment to me, but not the worst movie I've ever seen. I enjoyed the fight scenes, I enjoyed the car-chase scene, I enjoyed the computer-enhanced special effects. I did not enjoy seeing Keanu Reeves's naked butt, nor did I enjoy the way-too-long 'tribal-dance-scene' or whatever that was. It seemed the creators were trying to fill in the sections between action scenes with gooey filler scenes and rhythmic music. There were some (seemingly) artificial attempts a plot development, and there were some re-used effects from the first movie (the slo-mo bullets creating shockwaves, the 'karate kid' crane kick stopped in mid-air, etc).
I must say that my expectations might have been a little inflated due to the (in my opinion) overwhelming success of the first movie. I can't even count how many times I've seen the first one. So, I might be a little harsh here. I think this movie could have been at least 30 min shorter by cutting out all the fluff-and-puff scenes that had no bearing on the outcome (like the naked Keanu scene). I would give this movie 4.5 out of 10 -- just a smidge below 'middle' but definitely not to the point of 'unseeable'.