R.I.P.D. 2 - Rise Of The Damned

I have never really been that kind of guy who cares what films makes most of the money at the box office. It´s not always a guarantee that a big box office hit will always be a good film, there are some terrible ones out there. I am especially thinking about A Good Day To Die Hard, the 5th Die Hard film that may have a lot of action but not much else to offer. I remember when i saw this film in a cinema and how disappointed i was. Bruce Willis didn´t even feel like the character John McClane anymore, he was just Bruce Willis killing russians. Only a few action scenes might have been entertaining, but the Die Hard feeling just wasn´t there. I have always been a big Die Hard fan and i love all 3 of them between the 80´s and 90´s. The 4th one was ok, but you could tell that it was difficult to make another sequel as good as the previous ones. Since i know now about Bruce Willis illness i still respect him as an actor and for all the great movies he have made for so many years, but i can´t defened A Good Day To Die Hard. The film did well at the box office pulling in over 300 Million dollars in ticket sales, and also did well both on DVD and Blu Ray. So i get it, there are people who enjoy this film and that´s fine, we all have different taste. But what if a cinema release on a big budget gets released worldwide and becomes a huge box office bomb, will that affect my taste in the film? Not at all, i always watch films no matter how little money they make. Since we are talking about box office bombs at this moment, i believe some of you might have heard ( or have seen ) the 2013 sci fi action film known as R.I.P.D. I did see the film in cinema back in 2013 and i remember how empty the cinema was, even if this film have big names such as Jeff Bridges, Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Bacon. Did i enjoy R.I.P.D. ? I look at this film like this, it can be entertaining in certain scenes, but there were way too many special effects used in this film. In fact some of the CGI effects looks pretty bad, and this is coming from a film on a budget around 130 - 150 million dollars. I can understand why the audience did not care about R.I.P.D. since they seemed to enjoy the Men In Black franchise more. There are a few fun dialogue scenes between Jeff Bridges and Ryan Reynolds, but this is still a film struggling with a lot of problems. If anyone would have asked me if we ever would get a sequel, or a prequel to R.I.P.D. i would not have believed them. But here we are with a prequel to this box office bomb, and i was actually curious to see if this film could be good. Is it possible that R.I.P.D. 2 is a lot better than the original film, or is this preuqel even worse than i ever could have expected?

The year is 1987 and gun slinger Roy Pulsipher ( Jeffrey Donavan ) is shot down days before his daughter´s wedding. He is transported to R.I.P.D. ( Rest In Peace Department ) where he is given a chance to return to Earth to prevent death of other people. He gets a new companion called Jeanne ( Penelope Mitchell ) who will help him on his mission to defeat Deados ( evil spirits who have taken over human bodies ).

When a prequel is made that you didn´t even expect to be made, you don´t have any high expectations. And after seeing this film i can at least say this, it is not worse than the first film. But i do have some things to say as well, but let´s get into the positive. First of all i like that this prequel takes place in the late 1800´s, and does something completely different than the first film. If they would have made a prequel and just ripped it off completely from the first film, i probably would not have watched R.I.P.D. 2 at all. The western era is actually a fun idea for a film like this, that mixture science fiction, action and horror elements all together. In some ways this films reminds me a little bit about the 1999 western action film Wild Wild West with Will Smith, even though there are some big differences between both of these films. R.I.P.D. 2 does indeed combine classic western ingredients with more modern technology, and in some scenes it is actually entertaining. The chemistry between actors Jeffrey Donavan ( worth checking out in the Clint Eastwood film J. Edgar, a film you don´t hear much about anymore unfortunately ) and Penelope Mitchell ( who you might recognize as the character Liv Parker in the TV series The Vampire Diaries ) works pretty good, and i actually think they did a good choice on these actors. I like seeing actor Richard Brake here as the main villain. Now we get into some of the problems with this film, and let us begin with the CGI effects. You can tell quite early in the film that this prequel cost a lot less than the original film, and i can accept that as long as you make the film good. The problem with the CGI effects is that they don´t look really cool, and since this is supposed to be a film for the fans of the original film, i don´t think they will feel pleased with the final results. The action scenes could have been a bit more violent, because it feels like they hold back and made this film more family friendly. Not saying you have to have body parts flying, but if you are going to have fighting and gun battles included, make sure you have fun violence scenes to entertain the audience. The acting in general is what you might expect in a film like this, but not many characters offer anything interesting. Director Paul Leydon ( who directed the great action TV series Cleaners ) have definetely some interesting ideas with R.I.P.D. 2 - Rise Of The Damned, but i think with the limited budget he knew it would be hard to make this prequel feel bombastic. R.I.P.D. 2 is not disaster, there are a couple of fun scenes if you are in the right mood, but overall this is not a film you will remember. A prequel that could have been fun, but feels more like a violent Hallmark production.

Rating: DD