CERT: 18 | DIRECTOR: PATRYK VEGA | SCREENPLAY: PATRYK VEGA | STARRING: OLGA BOLADZ, KASIA WARNKE, SEBASTIAN FABIJANSKI, AGNIESZKA DYGANT | RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
After the brutal events of the first film, the Women of Mafia are back to finish taking over the drug underworld that was once ruled by men.
Sequels are never an easy task – filmmakers must build on the solid foundations of the predecessor whilst also allowing the film to blossom and mould into its own beast. Unfortunately, with Women of Mafia 2, director Patryk Vega pulls the bottom Jenga piece out and watches his tower come crashing down with a whimper. In the first film, characters such as Bela and Daria had interesting backgrounds and motivations for what they were attempting to do and the film ended on an appetising cliffhanger – within the first 30 seconds of this sequel, that entire setup is unravelled and thrown violently into the garbage. From then, the returning jumbled web of narratives gets even more tangled than before with the introduction of new characters that are bland, uninteresting and drab and a consistent harsh shift in tone throughout the agonising runtime that just boggles the mind and bores the audience.
Speaking of the tone, the film fluctuates from a dark and gritty setpiece that shows promise before cutting to a comedic relief character, that has no business even being involved, and it completes negates everything in the previous scene. We found ourselves at time forgetting even who some of these characters were, they were that forgettable. Making them even more redundant was the fact that they felt like filler due to the monstrous 138-minute runtime that could have 30-40 minutes shaved off it to at least fix some of the pacing and cohesion issues.
Perhaps the only saving grace was the “main” plotline with Daria that was the only one that made any real sense. Couple that with some over the top and vicious gore – those were the only enjoyable moments in this mess of a story.
After Women of Mafia only being a decent mob thriller, Women of Mafia 2 had bags of potential to fix everything that was wrong with the first instalment but instead changed the tone and narrative choices in the wrong direction leading to an over-long, lacklustre and confusing sequel with very little to sing about.
