Is this the most 'Luc Besson back on his bullshit' movie of all time? As far as I know, the controversial French filmmaker had noting to do with the original "Crimson Rivers" (although his regular DP shot the film), but he stepped in here to handle scripting and production duties. Why? I'm not sure, as this has the most tenuous connections imaginable to the original "Crimson Rivers"—you have to wonder if Besson simply wanted to make an action/thriller with Jean Reno and figured it'd be more financially successful if he piggybacked off a known property. The result is like if New Line Cinema had followed up "Seven" with a sequel that felt more like "The Da Vinci Code" or "National Treasure" with a dash of the Wolfenstein video games. "Crimson Rivers 2" is stylish but its style is all over the place. This was the same year Besson was producing his parkour-and-martial-arts flick "District B13," so he even drafted one of that film's stars, Cyril Raffaelli, to play a parkour-practicing monk, who gets one of the longest chase scenes ever committed to film. The sets resemble a Nine Inch Nails music video, and young Benoît Magimel has a very 'early 2000's cool guy' look with dyed black hair and a vintage West German Army jacket; he kinda looks like Tim Wheeler, the lead singer from Ash. There's even a fight scene against a drug dealer set to the music of The Stooges (it's actually a pretty damn brutal fight scene).Is this as good as the first "Crimson Rivers"? No. Is it a good movie, period? No. But it moves like a freight train from one bizarre plot point and action setpiece to the next. One minute Jean Reno's car is being shot up by a German artillery weapon hidden for decades in the French forest, the next he's shooting off the fingers of a super-powered monk in a grocery store. Even Christopher Lee shows up...speaking French! I cannot say I was ever less than entertained.
