BLADE II
Starring: Wesley Snipes, Leonor Varela, Luke Goss
Directed by: Guillermo Del Toro
Distributed by: New Line Cinema

Date: 03/23/02
By: Gerry Wang

    Finally, blockbuster movies are coming out. Unfortunately, after BLADE 2, we have to wait more than a month for SPIDER-MAN. What can tide us over in the mean time? SORORITY BOYS? KISSING JESSICA STEIN? Fuck that fag/lesbo shit. THE SCORPION KING? I'm sorry, but even though The Rock is the most electrifying chef out there (he wants us to smell his cooking for some reason), that movie is going to suck festering balls. The state of movies these days is horrible.

    Let's see, what can we watch between BLADE 2 and SPIDER-MAN........ ah, the Director's Cut of AMADEUS is get released. Go watch this movie instead. F. Murray Abraham's Salieri remains one of the more memorable highlights of that Milos Forman masterpiece. The music........ man the music is just brilliant. It blows my mind to think of the genius of the classical composers centuries ago.

Donnie Yen of IRON MONKEY! Fuck yeah!

    Anyway, back to BLADE 2. If you have any trepidation over whether you can watch this sequel w/o watching the first installment, don't worry. BLADE 2 stands by itself pretty well, but it is when it tries to be a sequel that I started having problems w/ it. I enjoyed the first BLADE a whole lot. This was the first time I saw super fast frenetic swordplay edited w/ MTV-style aplomb. But it started to suck when the plot became stupid and the ending became too CGI.

    BLADE 2 suffers from the same malady. Curses. The movie starts out promising, but by the ending, there have been so many stupid plot twists that the movie gets bogged down in us trying to rationalize its absurdity. But hey, we don't watch comic book movies for the plot, right? Yes.... we do not. Yes, just keep saying that to yourself Gerry.

Those Reapers reminded me of Orcs.

    Make no mistake, BLADE 2 is still a very entertaining movie. The fighting has been kicked up a notch, w/ even more Hong Kong-style wire fighting and MATRIX-like bullet time sequences. Wesley Snipes is an extremely capable martial arts actor. He oozes badassness. Makes you wonder if the Wachowskis considered Wesley Snipes for the part of Neo. Sadly, a Messianic figure like that being black would be hard for the world to swallow.

    BLADE 2's premise is pretty strong. Blade has to band together w/ the Bloodpack, an elite fight force made up of vampires, to hunt down and destroy the Reapers, the product of a vampire virus that has mutated into something monstrous. The irony is that the Bloodpack has been training to find Blade and kill him. As you may already know, Blade is the mortal nemesis of vampires, because his life mission is to hunt them done and eradicate them.

Nomak, the carrier Reaper.

    Blade is a Daywalker, meaning he is half human, half vampire. He has all of their strengths and none of their weaknesses. They cower before him. But these Reapers...... man, they are unlike anything he's ever seen. The have PREDATOR-style jaws and ALIEN-style retractable feeding apparatus. They're also strong, fast, and immune to silver and garlic. The only way to kill them is w/ sunlight. And they all happen to be pretty good hand to hand fighters, for some strange reason... =)

    The fighting, btw, is glorious. The director, Guillermo Del Toro, is clearly having a lot of fun w/ staging these fights, using influence from HK movies as well as the WWF. That's right, the World Wrestling Federation. The whole crowd erupted in a cheer once Blade suplexed a badguy. Del Toro's direction is stylish and energetic, as the camera swoops along w/ Blade has he somersaults all over the place.

Wesley Snipes is unstoppable.

    Besides the fighting, BLADE 2 was also nice and gory. The special effects in making anatomic models for the autopsy scene was fucking nasty and fucking realistic. This is a gutsy movie, in more ways than one, if you catch my drift.

    Overall, I like BLADE 2 surpasses the original, but it is also as lacking as the original. The plot takes too many lame twists and turns, and by the end the movie runs out of gas. Oh yeah, the romantic subplot is also way underdeveloped. There is no chemistry between Blade and Nyssa, played by Leonor Varela. That said, the fighting is still breath-taking. I'd watch it again.

Blade and the Bloodpack join together.

Grade: B
-- Awesome fight scenes, but the story's payoff is underwhelming.

Babe-o-meter: C
-- Leonor Varela's pretty good looking, and you know female vampires are good at sucking.......