As a fictional character, Zorro is the original superhero. He inspired Batman, The Shadow, and the like, a masked man with a dark persona who uses his wits and wily cunning to win battles in a world where evil men rule. Zorro is a man whose entire origin resembles Bruce Wayne, The Batman. An aristocrat by day, Don Diego is a playboy who lives in the period era of California who hobnobs with yuppies of his ilk and authorities. By night he’s a masked man with a faithful servant who wields swords and weaponry alike to fight crime and take on bandits and warlords of all kinds.
Matt Cordell is back and it was only a matter of time before he continued to seek pure vengeance on those who wronged him in his past life. Going back to the events of the first film, “Maniac Cop 2” traces its steps from the original film to continue off where Cordell started his journey for revenge against the people who framed and jailed him, leaving him to die at the hands of inmates he’d busted years before. “Maniac Cop 2” is a film intent on not only continuing the narrative but finishing off the loose ends of the original film.
William Lustig is no stranger to films that dabble in the anarchic and try to play with our conceptions of paranoia and fear. The director is responsible for one of the most infamous slashers to ever come out in theaters “Maniac,” so delving in to the opposite spectrum of the premise is not surprising. “Maniac Cop” is almost an unofficial spin off of “Maniac” in where the former title was about a maniacal psycho on the loose in the city, the latter is about a maniacal authority figure on the loose in the city. Lustig doesn’t detract from the same tone and atmosphere that “Maniac” succeeded in and injects much of the same chaos and paranoia in this slasher film.
