hands of the U.S. Government because we will
destroy stuff responsibly with it, unlike those other axises
of evil. This also reunites Jack with his paramour from
the last film, the beautiful but surly Nadia Ramadan (Joanne
Kelly), still on loan from the Syrian government to do
something I also can't remember. Blame SyFy for my
memory problems.
Not surprisingly, considering the player we know Jack to be,
he and Dr. Halstrom have a salacious past which is in direct
conflict with the salacious future that Jack and Nadia would
like to have and this conflict will play between these two
women throughout this entire movie and as attractive as both
of these women might be, they are equally annoying. The
good thing is that most of their bitchy conflict is usually
happening in the midst of some kind of action sequence so we
don't have to focus on it all that much.
As you probably can imagine, adventure is afoot as Jack does
his action thing, finding the clues to the next part of the
puzzle with an awful lot of crazy evil people on his
trail. More or less. I mean they are on his trail
trying to kill him and stuff but they really don't want to
kill him because he's the only person who can find the stuff
that they want. It's a conundrum. More action
ensues and the third part of the puzzle is still another movie
away.
I could probably make things easy on myself and just copy and
paste whatever it was I said about 'Jack Hunter and the Lost
Treasure of Ugarit' since Part II of the Jack Hunter adventure
plays out almost exactly the same. More Ivan Sergei
looking a lot more like an Old Navy catalog cover model than
an action hero, more Joanne Kelly being lovely but surly, more
Ivan and Joanne having almost no chemistry together despite
the fact that there's allegedly some sexual tension in the
air, we do have the added bonus of Alaina Huffman who is
arguably even lovelier than Joanne Kelly but definitely
surlier, more of actor Mario Nail Bassil adding comic
buffoonery as Tariq the bumbling assistant, more Jack Hunter
wearing his Indiana Jones Fedora… which he shouldn't do
because it makes us think about Indiana Jones which is a
comparison this movie doesn't need… more action, more
adventure, more close calls, more double crosses and more
intrigue. There's also less Thure Riefenstein as our
main heavy and that's a bad thing because his controlled cool
villainy was one of the better things about the first movie.
Also similar to Part I, there is an awful lot going on which
does serve the purpose of keeping Jack Hunter's second
adventure from being dull, but it also makes it very busy
which also means we're never completely sure about what's
going on at any given moment, and if you were to play back a
few of the things we saw earlier to what will eventually
happen later… then some stuff really stops making sense, but
we do recommend that you just don't do that. The good
thing is that having a completely lucid narrative in this
movie isn't key to enjoying this movie since action and
adventure and non-existent sexual tension are always just a
stone's throw away.
True enough, from what we've seen of the first two Jack Hunter
adventures, it does have its challenges, not the least of
which that it's cloning Indiana Jones which even Indiana Jones
couldn't do in later movies. But it is entertaining and
it's FREE! We call that 'value' where I come from.
