ShangLuda
Admirable film.
Ricardo Daly
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
Rosie Searle
It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.
gcd70
The special effects in "F/X 2" from director Richard Franklin are quite impressive in a movie that, unfortunately, relies entirely upon them alone to carry it. Franklin opens his pic in the same manner as the first, that is, a film within a film."The Deadly Art of Illusion" lacks the edge of the seat plot line and very good performances of the first. Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy are only likable in this "F/X", and no more. Rachel Ticotin and Joanna Gleason add little to proceedings. Bill Condon's story (based upon original characters created by Robert T. Megginson and Gregory Fleeman) is along the same lines as the first, but nowhere near as good.Monday, July 15, 1991 - Hoyts Forest Hill Chase
Carson Trent
Not even worth a talk.This comment is only meant as a warning to people who value their free time.The movie has a ridiculous script, with countless points where it's obvious that the course of action was decided on the set(for example the chase in the supermarket where Rollie seems not to know what he's doing, and why), and a whole series of ridiculous and unnecessary fx-tricks display(like the can-explosion in the supermarket), meant only to deceive the audience into not thinking about the numerous flaws(bad camera-work and even worse directing and pyrotechnics).Basically it's an attempt to sell the characters form the original(which is not a great, but a quite watchable movie) in the same packing, just like a remake, but without any story. A waste of Brian Brown's, Brian Dennehy's (both decent actors), but most of all a waste of our free time.
Pepper Anne
F/X2 was actually a good sequel. But I think that's because it is very much like the first movie. And, F/X itself was a great movie because of the idea of a special effects artist trying to get himself out of a mess. Rollie Tyler (Bryan Brown) is now a toy inventor, having retired from the special effects business. His girlfriend's ex-husband, a cop named Mike, employ's Rollie's special effects expertise to set up a sting operation. But, something goes foul and the cop winds up dead. Like F/X 2, Rollie becomes once again involved with crooked cops and has to solve the whodunnit. And, part of what made the first movie great, too, was Brian Dennehy as detective Leo McCarthy, who Rollie Tyler calls on for help. As far as the story goes, it involves a bigger scale of corruption in the law enforcement circle, but the movie is just as enjoyable. And, you still get to see Rollie Tyler using his special effects abilities, which I always thought was the best part of the first one. If you have seen the first F/X, it's probably very likely you'll like the second one. It's one of the few movies I have seen where I can say that the sequel was pretty good.
MichaelM24
F/X 2 turned out to be a better sequel that I was expecting, as a result of what I had heard people say about it over the years. I was glad to see Bryan Brown and Brian Dennehy share more scenes together this time around (they only had one in the first film), and I was also surprised that the story was pretty good, in the same league as the first. Sure, some parts were predictable (nearly every film has got some predictability to it), but for the most part, it was nicely-paced with some good suspense and mystery. I was hoping for a better usage of special effects by the characters (after all, the series is called F/X), but Brown pretty much just MacGyvers his way through the film, especially in the supermarket sequence, one of the film's standout scenes. My personal favorite was the scene in Brown's apartment, where he uses an animatronic remote-controlled clown to handle an assassin (who, like Cliff DeYoung in the first film, mysteriously vanishes from the movie without a trace), and the battle at the mansion at the end of the film is pretty exciting, with Brown making use of a bunch of effects equipment to stop the bad guys. All-in-all, a pretty decent sequel that has me torn between which of the two films I like more. I really can't decide. I know it's been eleven years, and since this one apparently didn't perform as well at the box office as the first one did, I doubt we'll ever see an F/X 3, but I wouldn't mind seeing it.
