After achieving success with City on Fire and the original Prison on Fire, Ringo Lam's career hit a slump with a series of box office failures. With Wild Search and this sequel, Lam moved away from the dark tone which highlighted many of his earlier works. Though this movie involves the same protagonist as the first (Chow Yun-Fat, essaying a role he can probably play in his sleep) and features similar themes, they are radically different in execution. Don't get me wrong, Prison on Fire 2 is still a good film, but I really enjoyed the moodiness and downright violent bits of the first movie and prefer it over the somewhat sappy happenings in the sequel.

Prison on Fire 2's basic plot has Chow being denied parole and then hatching a plan to escape with an old-timer (Chang Chung-Yung) so he can see his son one last time. There's lots of melodrama and some overacting, even from the great Chow. But the movie as a whole flows really well except for a couple of bonding scenes between Chow and Chang which slow it down a bit. And of course, there's a huge, vicious prison brawl at the end. Big Chow Yun-Fat or Ringo Lam fans will probably get more out of this movie than the average viewer, but it's still definitely worth a look.

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