Blade II

Dir: Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, Mimic, Hellboy, Pan's Labyrinth)
Source Material: based on the Marvel Comics character Blade (source)
Cast: Wesley Snipes, Leonor Varela, Kris Kristofferson, Thomas Kretschmann, Luke Goss, Norman Reedus, Ron Perlman, Donnie Yen, Tony Curran
USA/Germany, 2002

Seen: Originally seen theatrically, revisited on DVD November 18, 2009

Reason to Review: Vampathon: Vampire Film Marathon *

Blade II is a film that really divides people on the side of those who think it's the best in the series and those who think it's the worst. It ain't a milk toast movie, everyone feels strongly one way or the other. For me, I'm on the side that does not think it's the best.

All of the icing that made Blade better that just good movie, is lost on Blade II. Humour is almost non-existent, there is a really cheap move to tie it back to the first film, things go by unexplained and the list goes on and on. They also ramped up the gore big time, making it darker and colder. But, as much as those things bother me, what made it not a fun watch was actually the characters feeling out of character. I mean these aren't hugely 3 dimensional characters or anything, but still there were things that didn't sit right, especially with Blade himself. Plus they add a female character who starts off pretty cool, but then looks like they just really needed 'a girl' in the story. So bored of that in stories in general, but in this case it wasn't consistent or believable in the context of the story itself. There were also two characters that were extremely hard to differentiate visually which was no help to the all over the place story, which in all honestly I only fully understood this time round because the other time I watched this I couldn't really care less (and it was before I was reviewing, so I didn't feel obligated to 'get it').

In terms of a vampire film, I don't think much was added to it that wasn't already explored in Blade. Although there were new weapons and science/tech stuff, it really felt more like a monster film than a vampire film.

On the side of what was enjoyable, the list is pretty short. I'll give that there were great action sequences and I enjoyed several of the smaller characters like Reinhardt played by Ron Perlman, Priest played by Tony Curran and Snowman played by Donnie Yen but they were not on screen nearly enough.

Shannon's Overall View:
I still don't like it
I own it, but won't likely watch it again
I'd recommend it fans of visceral & dark action films

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© Shannon Ridler, 2009

* Vampathon is a 16 week marathon explore vampire films from Nosferatu (1922) up to the upcoming release of The Twilight Saga: New Moon