“Nobody seems to be at the gate.”
In Russia, an American US Army Colonel, Robert Jefferson (Marcus Aurelius), is in charge of a group of Russian soldiers. They are on a mission to capture, alive, a giant python for shipment to the US. The Russians are being paid 50 million dollars for the 80-foot python. The python was genetically created by scientists from the United States and was lost somewhere near the Ural Mountains. Once the colonel and his men complete their assignment, and capture the snake alive, they place it on an American cargo plane.
Their destination is the United States. On route the plane is shot down by Chechen rebels that believe the plane is Russian. A near-by Russian Army unit attacks the rebels and shoots them all. They find the American plane and the containers it was carrying. They bring the containers back to their base. They open one of the containers. The python inside kills everyone except the commander of the base Colonel Zubov (Ivaylo Geraskov).
Dwight Stoddart (Dana Ashbrook) is an American. His wife Nalia (Simmone Jade Mackinnon) is Russian. They run a shipping business in Russia. They are approached by Greg Larson (Billy Zabka). He hires them to move a mysterious container. When they get to the military base it appears to be deserted. They discover the snake is loose and there is no way to get it back. It kills a bunch of the agents that came to retrieve it. Larson’s orders are to retrieve DNA samples and bring them back. Then Zubov turns up and Dwight and Nalia find out that there are two snakes running around. By now Larson’s orders have gone from snake recovery to DNA retrieval, to no witnesses.
“Python II” was released in 2002 and was directed by Lee Alan McConnell. It’s a low budget “B” movie made for the SYFY channel. The plot is a little thin. It’s not clear how the snakes got to the Ural Mountains to begin with. My guess is the plane carrying it crashed. Just like the last movie. And just like how it ended up at the military base. Apparently, snakes don’t fly too well. William Zabka who plays Greg Larson reprises his role from the original Python movie. If you didn’t see “Python” that’s OK. You don’t need to see “Python” to understand “Python II”. There are also enough flashbacks that you get the general idea of where the Pythons came from.
The movie itself is a little darker. It’s played straight while the first movie was basically camp. “Python II” did not do as well as the first Python movie and that may be why. People may have expected the same campy dialogue and stars as the first movie and so may have felt a little cheated. If so, that’s a shame since “Pythons II”, for the most part, was decent. It had lots of action and a bunch of gung-ho soldier types with automatic weapons, hand grenades flame throwers and two giant snakes. What more could you ask for?