director
Guillermo del Toro
screenwriter
David S. Goyer
based on
characters created by
Marv Wolfman
Gene Colan
producers
Michael De Luca
Peter Frankfurt
Wesley Snipes
cinematographer
Gabriel Beristain
music
Marco Beltrami
editor
Peter Amundson
cast
Wesley Snipes (Blade)
Kris Kristofferson (Whistler)
Ron Perlman (Reinhardt)
Luke Goss (Nomak)
Leonor Varela (Nyssa)
Norman Reedus (Scud)
Donnie Yen (Snowman)
Matt Schulze (Chupa)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 110m
u.s.
release: 3/22/02
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
see also:
- blade
- blade: trinity
other guillermo
del toro films
reviewed on this website:
- hellboy
- mimic
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As pretty much the only African-American
actor with an action-film franchise in which race is never much
of an issue, Wesley Snipes -- who also co-produced 1998's original
Blade as well as its new sequel
-- has understandably latched onto Blade, the cool and hard-boiled
vampire slayer, as his shot at longevity after too many movies
like Murder at 1600. He's certainly unimpeachable as a
spring-loaded bad-ass in the Blade films, but does anyone
else miss the days when Snipes used to take chances and show
his formidable stuff as both a comic and dramatic actor? Doesn't
he miss those days?
In Blade II, Snipes
lightens up a little, but just a little; occasionally he lets
Blade smile, but usually only when someone is fool enough to
start shit with him. Blade still has little discernible personality;
he wanders into dens of vampiric iniquity as if he belonged there
(well, he sort of does -- he's half-vampire by birth) and cuts
loose with state-of-the-art weaponry -- including but not limited
to his own body -- until he's the only one left standing. If
you're going to have an indomitable stick as a hero, you need
quirky, fallible foils as his back-up, preferably played by quirky,
infallible character actors; but these films only have eyes for
Blade.
The sequel picks up Blade as
he's rescuing his mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) from the
clutches of some Eurotrash vamps who've been keeping the old
guy in a tank for years. This hasn't much brightened Blade's
views of vampires, but soon enough some ninja-clad vamps are
coming to him with a truce and a proposition. A particularly
ugly breed of bloodsuckers known as Reapers (derived from a mutated
new strain of the vamp virus) have been decimating the vampire
population. "Good," Blade might say. But the Reapers
will also kill anything else that moves, including humans. Not
so good.
Blade grudgingly signs on to
help his former foes, aligned in a group cheerfully dubbed "the
Blood Pack" and including the intimidating Ron Perlman as
a bruiser named Reinhardt and the stylish-looking non-actress
Leonor Varela as Nyssa, a vamp with impressive anatomical knowledge
(she dissects a Reaper as if she did this every day) and a growing
attraction to the movie's star and co-producer. Once the exposition
is out of the way, the majority of Blade II devotes itself
to fight scenes between the Blood Pack and the Reapers. The movie
has accordingly been compared to the Alien films, particularly
Aliens, in the way it pits our heroes against hordes of
relentless insensate evil. Here and there it's startlingly well-mounted,
but overall the movie is no more or less than a fancy shoot-em-up.
Critics who should know better
have placed gifts at the feet of director Guillermo del Toro,
who has at least two fine horror films to his credit (1993's
Cronos and 2001's The Devil's Backbone). Del Toro
is being praised here for bringing talent and brio to an action-horror
sequel and then dropping most of the talent. A lot of what del
Toro does here is indistinguishable from what any hotshot MTV
director might do with the same script; there's much computer-aided
leaping about, much flashing of sharp objects and bodies flying
apart into orange sparks. The Reapers are spectacularly hideous
creations, but del Toro doesn't find the beauty in that ugliness
(as a great horror director might). The opposition here are just
gross things to be eradicated.
Blade II is stupidly watchable, just as its
predecessor was; these movies are obviously meant to be ass-kicking
urban horror pieces, with no mystery or dread, just one set-piece
after another in which Blade -- and, by extension, the star and
co-producer -- is continually shown to be the coolest guy around,
and also the most testosteronal. Snipes gets his voice way down
low, enunciating with a hipster's idea of machismo, yet again
he doesn't seem aware of the joke in it. Is Wesley Snipes afraid
people still remember his drag-queen turn in To
Wong Foo? He needs to get away from the latex and leather
and get some real acting work, and his director needs to stop
goofing around with sequels based on comic books. Blade II
is passable for what it is, but what it is seems well beneath
most of the participants.
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