Female Prisoner # 701 Scorpion: Beast Stable

This is the second film in the box set of Scorpion movies, but the third in the series. This doesn’t really mean all that much beyond how she’s somehow managed to escape from prison in between the end of the first film and the start of this one, but if you were expecting this to come directly after the original you might be a tad surprised.

The film is a bit different than the first one, in large part because Scorpion is out on the loose (in a nice opener, she’s riding the subway when a cop tries to arrest her and loses a limb for his efforts). She starts building up some semblance of a life for herself, but this is of course thwarted when she runs afoul of a prostitution ring and, once again, the police.

The police officer trying to take her down is really the best reason to watch this film. It is admittedly a tad slow in the middle when she’s trying to get herself a life, but by the end when the officer in charge is beating up random people and ordering the sewers to be blown up you know you’re in safe hands. It’s the last film in the series helmed by director Shunya Ito, and he manages the difficult task of making his third effort as entertaining as his first (though, despite having a story in which prostitution is heavily involved, the nudity of the first film seems to have mostly been replaced with a lot more violence). There’s only one film left in the set, and hopefully having a new director won’t ruin the series. Really though, what are the odds of that?

Rating: ***