BLADE II

Blade II is the perfect marriage of fanboy and filmmaker. Everything you'd want out of a Blade movie - gore, martial arts, gunplay, clever quips, and techno music - is here to the nth degree. Best of all, it's filmed and choreographed with absolute mastery (thanks Donnie Yen!)

Guillermo del Toro never forgets to include his more artistic side. Detailed creature anatomy, amazing creature design, an understanding of where to put the camera, and great characters. It's all here.

Blade II is an incredible action picture and even though some of the CGI looks dated (it really just adds to the charm), Blade II is as exhilarating today as it was in 2002.

The second piece of this vampire hunter trilogy blurs the lines between Action, Super Hero and Horror, which personally I'm kinda liking.

This time around, Blade (Wesley Snipes; New Jack City, Chaos), Abraham Whistler (Planet of the Ape, Provinces of Night) and new arrival Scud (Norman Reedus; The Boondock Saints, Pandorum) must team up with the Blood Pack, made up of Dieter Reinhardt (Ron Perlman; Hellboy, Outlander), Nyssa Damaskinos (Hell Ride, Wrong Turn at Tahoe), Chupa (Matt Schulze; The Transporter, The Fast and the Furious), Asad (Danny-John Jules; Red Dwarf, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels), Snowman (Donnie Yen; IP Man, Highlander: Endgame), Verlaine (Marit Kile; Doctors, Blue Murder), Priest (Tony Curran; The Midnight Meat Train, Underworld: Evolution), and Lighthammer (Daz Crawford; Hammer of the Gods, Game Over) in order to defeat UberVamp Jared Nomak (personal favourite Luke Goss; Death Race 2, Hellboy II: The Golden Army, Tekken) and his army of Reaper Strain Vampires.

With me so far? No? Then go watch the damn movie! It's very fucking good. The opening is almost as strong as the original, and pretty much everything else about it is better. Not to mention the fact that I'm a total Luke Goss fanboy. All of the characters are so much better. They interact and everything. And even though Wesley Snipes has never really impressed me as an actor, the character of Blade was a little less cheesy, which always helps, and basically just better all 'round.

SPOILERS FOR BLADE, BLADE II and TRINITY: An interesting point, without ruining anything about the trilogy is that in all three films, vampires fight vampires. Not in the whole "Blade's half a vampire so he kills full-on vampires" way, although there is most certainly that, but in Blade, Frost kills the Elder vampires to become La Magra. In Blade II, The Blood Pack and Blade team up to take down a new, much more dangerous breed of vampires. And in Trinity, Dracula goes around killing vampires, pretty much for fun. Just food for thought. I've never read the comics much myself, so I don't really know if that's something that's been going on for a while, or if it just turned out that way.

There were a couple of lame bits. Some very stupid lines like "they took all of our weapons. Even your sword." Even your sword! Man, the single weapon for which you were named after that has killed more vampires than any other thing on the planet, and the vampires took it away from you? The audacity! And there's this whole thing where Whistler is alive again, they went most of the way to explaining it, and then sort of forgot. It would have been so simple to have a four second flashback cover the lot of it. Oh well.

Still though, I'm very, very fond of this one.

77%

-Gimly

Blade II is more than just a good Blade or comic book movie. It's one of the best vampire films of the last 20 years.

Blade II was a significant step up for the Blade franchise (and, unfortunately, the trilogy's peak) with a much more experienced director and a unique and exciting premise. This time the vampires are the prey and are desperate to survive the growing horde of vampire zombies, desperate enough to side with their sworn enemy, Blade, in hopes of surviving this plague. Both Blade and Blade: Trinity placed inexperienced directors at the helm, but Blade II put experienced horror and creature director Guillermo del Toro in charge, and the result was outstanding! Blade II has the most horror influence of the trilogy and the best story. Del Toro's involvement in all three films might have saved the series, but instead, we got the all-out action letdown of Blade: Trinity. Wesley Snipes was a perfect choice for Blade, and surrounding him with a cast that included Ron Pearlman, Tony Curran, and Donnie Yen (all experienced in the genre and with action) makes Blade II a top-notch vampire action comic book film.

Not as good as the 1st. Seems like it was less action. Movie was still good though.

This time "Blade" (Wesley Snipes) joins forces with the vampire council to prevent the all-out eradication of the human and vampire species by the cross-breed "Reaper" that has such a rapacious hunger that it will devour just about anything to survive - no-one is safe! He allies with the "Bloodpack" and with "Scud" (Norman Reedus) on a quest to track down Luke Goss "(Nomak") who is the one creating these hybrid monsters, and to stop them before extinction beckons. This has quite a strong storyline, the characters are given some time to evolve and the chemistry between the rather static Snipes and Kris Kristofferson ("Whistler") works well on the few occasions it is on screen - though not really well enough to compensate for pretty wooden performances from messrs. Goss and Reedus. As with the first film, the fight scenes are far too heavily staged; they rob the story of menace and the over-use of the soundtrack to accompany these extended, gory, slaughter-scenes really does reduce this to an almost cartoon status. It is good to look at, stylishly produced, but sadly nowhere near as good as the original.

<em>'Blade II'</em> is a good follow-up to the 1998 predecessor. I'd personally say that the plot in this 2002 flick isn't as good, but is still entertaining in its own right and is portrayed by a stronger cast. Wesley Snipes is Wesley Snipes, brilliant. Behind him, Ron Perlman stands out.

I didn't know Norman Reedus was in this, love him in <em>'The Walking Dead'</em> - he elevates an otherwise forgettable character. Another favourite of mine is here too, as Matt Schulze of <em>'The Fast and the Furious'</em> fame appears. I also recognised Karel Roden, who distractingly has his lines dubbed by a British actor - very odd!

Lastly, I have to commend the special effects. The majority of which is admittedly as passable as was the case for <em>'Blade'</em>, but the new addition of that effect for the reaper mouths is outstanding - it genuinely still holds up to today. Very impressive.