Blu-ray review: Iceman 2: The Time Traveler

Hong Kong action star Donnie Yen (Ip Man, Iron Monkey) has built up so much goodwill over the years that even his lesser films still get a stamp of approval from his legions of diehard fans. But a film like Iceman 2: The Time Traveler is so incomprehensibly terrible that even Yen has thrown shade at it in the press. A sequel to 2014’s Iceman (which was also poorly received), this installment sat on the shelf for years before being released (and subsequently flopping) in China late last year.

After opening with a 10-minute recap of the first film, we follow He Ying (Yen), a Ming dynasty general, as he pursues The Golden Wheel of Time which allows him to flip-flop between eras, bringing him back to the Ming dynasty and back to our time in an effort to effort to save his village. That may sound simplistic, but it’s only because the plot of this film is so impenetrable that describing what Iceman 2 is about is as difficult as achieving actual time travel. The film simply feels jumbled, and spliced together more like a music video than a plot-driven narrative. There are definitely some interesting concepts at play here about the nature of time travel, but they get bogged down with the film’s schizophrenic editing and stilted acting, making for a totally disjointed viewing experience.

Well Go USA brings Iceman 2: The Time Traveler to Blu-ray with a stellar audio and video presentation, but next to nothing in terms of extras apart from two trailers. With seemingly everyone involved in this project laying blame on each other and trying to distance themselves from the film, it’s no surprise that there are no extensive making-of materials, but some context might have helped make sense of the final end product.

Donnie Yen is one of the best martial artists working in Hong Kong cinema, but even his greatest fans will likely want to skip Iceman 2: The Time Traveler. A sequel to a film that no one seems to have been clamouring for, this is one incoherent mess of a film that should never have been let out of the vault.

Iceman 2: The Time Traveler is available now via Well Go USA.