★★
“Let there be light!”
First, the good news. Whatever the issue was with its predecessor in the lighting department, it has been corrected. You can actually see what is going on. After spending the entire previous movie peering into murky darkness, trying to work out who was doing what and to whom, this was a blessed relied. Now, the bad news: it still falls some way short of interesting, so merits a mere half-star advance. Indeed, if anything, it’s a bit more tedious, not least because it clocks in at 112 minutes, without having anything like 112 minutes of content.
It does carry on immediately from Immortal Wars, so you might as well consider them as one single movie – watching one or the other would not provide anything close to a complete experience. Heroine Trikalypse (Gerhardy) continues her revolt against the evil Dominion Harvey (Roberts), with the help of her fellow rebel “deviants” – those who possess special powers. Apparently, this involves her escaping from Dominion’s facility… purely so she can break back into it. Not sure what that was all about. It certainly explains the expanded running time, with a lot of traipsing about, both through tunnels and across the (mercifully, well-lit!) desert, as Dominion’s henchwoman Hart (Alayne) tries to stop them.
There is no shortage of action, admittedly. It just isn’t very well-executed action, and for supposedly superpowered mutants, they seem to keep forgetting to use their superpowers much. We also discover the whole “fight to the death” thing from the first film was more true in the spirit than the actual observance, with Trikalypse’s BFF Iro not exactly as deceased as we were led to believe. Of course, as the rebels fight their way towards the inevitable confrontation between Trikalypse and Dominion, there are casualties, though it would be a stretch to say that any of them provided an emotional impact.
It’s all very predictable, such as the way that Dominion, despite his claimed aversion to deviants, has his own platoon of them. Yet, for someone who supposedly rules the entire United States, he can only apparently command a couple of dozen people. His actions also defy simple logic. If ever I become an evil overlord, and know the precise location of a group of my enemies who are coming to attack me, I will not send out a henchwoman to engage in banter and hand-to-hand combat. I’m taking off and nuking the entire site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure…
And, again: Bill Oberst is listed second in the credits, yet barely appears. [He may not appear at all, but I did genuinely doze off for a bit in the middle, so can’t be 100% sure] At least this time, Lujan does have the good grace to provide something of a satisfactory conclusion: another area in which it does improve on the first part. Overall though, the plodding nature of the core narrative largely negates these improvements, and combined with the extended duration, you’re left with something which you need to be in a highly forgiving mood to sit through.
Dir: Joe Lujan
Star: Jackie Gerhardy, Eric Roberts, Ben Stobber, Camille Alayne