Starring Hung Yan-Yan (Xiong Xin Xin), Chen Guanying and Smile Wei (Wei Xiao). Written by Shi Chao and directed by Fugui.

Set in Beihai, in Southern China in 1925, the story follows various characters – notably animal hunter Brother Qi (Yan-Yan) and his assistant Tiansheng (Guanying), the pretty, blind newspaper-seller Ling’er (Wei) and her opium-addicted brother Zhao, plus police captain Hu and local corrupt bigwig Mr. Ren – whose paths cross and re-cross as their lives are impacted by a spate of crocodile attacks.    

The film starts off really well with two full-on set pieces that occur prior to the film’s title appearing on the screen. First we follow a thief pickpocketing his way through crowded steam train carriages. He finds himself in the storage section of the train, breaks into an area sectioned off with iron bars, where he inadvertently releases a huge crocodile. There’s a surprisingly entertaining & funny moment where the cornered thief stumbles upon a magician’s top hat and proceeds to pull a bunch of stuff from it: some items are useful (a sword) and some items are not (a dove and some flowers) when it comes to fending off the critter! The thief tries really hard to survive, and you do find yourself hoping he might escape, but soon he and others get bitten and bashed about as the croc enters the crowded part of the train! There’s now a burst of (not too gory) carnage in the carriage! The passengers manage to blockade one end of the carriage with cases to separate themselves from the crocodile… and then the beast realises that there’s an old man who’s not protected by the wall of cases, so the scaly critter attacks him… and the film cuts to another location for its second set piece! We’re now at a big house, where a large wedding ceremony is underway: we see food being prepared, we watch as the marriage vows begin… and suddenly we get a preposterous-but-fun shot of the massive croc leaping through a wall, shooting through the air, over the head of the screaming big-boned bride-to-be, who has just witnessed the sudden demise of the skinny groom (played by the film’s editor, Tang Qiaojia)! The members of an orchestra, who’ve all been snoozing, wake up (unaware of the croc) and begin playing Mendelssohn’s ‘Wedding March’! We’re now treated to shots of death and destruction amongst the wedding guests as the pleasant wedding music plays on the soundtrack! It’s an enjoyable, well-done sequence!

After the film’s title finally pops up on-screen, we’re introduced to animal tracker Brother Qi and his youthful student Tiansheng. Their aim is to find and deal with the croc, which is now attacking the residents of Beihai. This croc, by the way, doesn’t lurk in the nearby waterways, it prefers to hang out in opium dens, or in houses, or in back alleys, or wherever the filmmakers want the action and thrills to next take place. When the crocodile goes on the attack, many of its victims get hurled high up in the air, just like they’d do if they were in one of Hung Yan-Yan’s martial arts films! There’s a very acrobatic, exciting encounter between Qi and the croc as it tears through crowded streets, with the bald-headed hunter in hot pursuit, leaping around, using a bow, a blowdart and even a handy anchor to eventually subdue the rampaging reptile!

When blowhard cop Captain Hu takes responsibility for capturing the croc, he doesn’t want to believe Brother Qi’s claims that there must be another crocodile on the loose in the area. Qi observes that the crocodile they caught is a male, but witnesses claimed the one that ran rampant through the wedding was a female. After Qi deduces that the other reptile is nested in the derelict Silver Hook Tavern, he and Tiansheng search the waterlogged place, find some eggs, and just about manage to escape from the dangerous female croc. Qi decides that the best way to lure the croc into a trap is to use the captured male reptile as bait, but the obsequious Captain Hu has already gifted the critter to the city’s dishonest big cheese, Mr. Ren. So Qi and Tiansheng go on a mission to steal the captured male croc from Ren’s mansion, but things don’t go as planned, resulting in first Qi, and then Tiansheng, getting captured and imprisoned by Ren and his lackeys. 

One of the film’s subplots concerns pathetic opium addict Official Zhao getting tricked into signing himself into massive debt whilst high as a kite at the drug den run by an associate of Mr. Ren. Zhao is forced (and bribed) to consent to the marriage of his beautiful blind sister Ling’er to the murderous, psychopathic son of Mr. Ren. Ling’er, whom Tiansheng has fallen in love with, consents to going through with the marriage in order to ensure Ren will not hurt her aged mother. This whole subplot comes to the fore as guests arrive at Ren’s mansion to celebrate the upcoming wedding, whilst Qi and his assistant remain tied up in cells below.

From a plot perspective, the still-loose croc is kind of forgotten for a while during this forced marriage sequence, but don’t worry… the angry female croc eventually turns up at Ren’s mansion, and once the scaly reptile sees that Ren is serving-up the cooked head of the male croc to his guests as part of the wedding feast, the she-croc gets even more angry! Havoc erupts, of course, Ren and his mentally-ill murderous son get offed by the beast, whilst Qi and Tiansheng finally escape from their cell to take-on the crocodile!

Qi uses various weapons – a spear, a trident and a long-handled club – to combat the croc, but this beastie is very difficult to overcome, and it savagely starts mauling Tiansheng, and it’s left to a gun-toting Ling’er to deliver a killer shot.

The CG croc effects in MEGA CROCODILE 2 may not be Oscar-worthy, but they’re pretty decent and they sort of give both of the crocodiles an almost stop-motion vibe, especially in the way the creatures occupy space in the shots and the way they move much of the time. The nicely-detailed creatures, which are depicted as large versions of their species rather than super-monster-sized beasts, definitely look ‘there’ on-screen: they do look solid – and they certainly don’t resemble the kind of unrealistic computer-rendered imagery seen in many similar Chinese creature features. Though these crocs are not overly fantastical with regard to their size, they do react and move in far-fetched ways, often jumping about in a manner that’s not very crocodilian, but this, I think, is acceptable within the reality of this creatures-and-martial-arts-and-action Chinese production.

Directed with verve and a lightness of touch by Fugui, MEGA CROCODILE 2 has a decent budget, with lots of extras used in the street scenes and the various set pieces. This movie is much, much better than Fugui’s earlier film, MEGA CROCODILE (2019), which featured shabby CG crocs and lacked the deftness of touch and humour that is on show in part 2 (this movie is not linked, story-wise, to the events in the first one). 

Story-wise, it’s never explained what the croc was doing penned-up on the steam train in the first place, and the nest of croc eggs found in the wrecked tavern is soon forgotten (perhaps a Part 3 will see the hatchlings run amok?), but this is an entertaining Chinese creatures-on-the-loose flick. For sure, the movie doesn’t quite live up to the promise of its first few set pieces, mainly due to the fact that the story gets a little sidetracked by the forced wedlock subplot, but the positives definitely outweigh the negatives.

A longer version of this review will be featured in an upcoming issue of Eastern Heroes Magazine.