The first Black Cat film was an uninspired remake of the cult favorite La Femme Nikita. This sequel isn't a direct remake or ripoff of any particular film, but it shares the first entry's sloppy and lackadaisical style, and settles in on the bottom of the barrel as far as Hong Kong action flicks go.

Black Cat (Jade Leung) -- spolier alert -- was killed at the end of the first movie, but that doesn't stop the CIA (who are apparently working out of Vancouver now) from implanting a fancy-schmancy microchip in her brain. Along with a handler (Robin Shou), Black Cat uses her special radiation-sensing power to try and find an assassin (Zoltan Buday) hell-bent on smoking the tipsy Russian president Yeltsin. Amazingly, it actually took three people to come up with the script for this movie, none of which could provide a convincing reason why the CIA is stopping a plot to kill the Russian president.

Outside of the inane plot, Black Cat II offers up more than its' fair share of sub-par thespianism. Though it is a little hard to judge the acting critically, since everyone is dubbed into Cantonese, except for one French guy that happens to be working in the Russian embassy. What the hell? Did anyone involved with this production actually look at the finished product, or did they just ship it out as quickly as filming stopped in order to try and make a quick buck off of foolish gweilos such as your friendly neighborhood reviewer?

Well, that's a rhetorical question, and here's another one: did Stephen Shin actually try to make exciting action scenes, or did he just plant his camera in a room and hope for the best? There's no flow or style to the proceedings, nor even any of the good old-fashioned ultra-violence to liven things up. Sure, Jade Leung looks nice fighting in a short skirt and heels (and puts those shoes to hilarious use during the finale) but if you want to see babes beating ass, there's a myriad of Hong Kong pictures out there other than this dreck that do a far better job of pandering to those base elements.

RATING: 3