Blade II (2002)

Having rescued Whistler from the grasp of the vampires and acted quickly enough to combat the vampire virus in his blood, Blade reforms his team. When his base is infiltrated by two vampires, he is offered a temporary truce that Blade accepts. He meets with the vampire council who ask for his help to track and kill a new strain of the vampire virus called the Reaper. The Reapers feed on vampires and humans, are immune to garlic and silver and threaten to rapidly multiple. Blade agrees to join forces but fighting alongside those he would hunt puts him very ill at ease.

Opening with the same style that made Blade enjoyable, it is immediately apparent that, if you liked the first film then you should enjoy this one just as much. The plot has quite a few major holes but I can't help eel it's a little unfair to attack a vampire horror movie for being a little illogical at times! What remains is a series of fast and stylish action scenes, held together by a reasonable plot and a nice few little twists and turns to keep it engaging. While the plot may only be average it is probably the dark action that you came for and it is as enjoyable as in the first film. The wirework was pretty good, mainly because the cast members involved could actually do it without looking like they had become members of Thunderbirds! The CGI stuff is not very good and the computerised characters, despite looking good, don't look or move real and thus take away from the energy and impact of the fights. Director del Toro handles the action well and also brings the same dark feel that he brought to Cronos and Mimic.

However generally the fights are good – good moves but still rather rough. Snipes has certainly worked on his body to the degree that he can perform these moves with a natural feel, only the WWF style moves came across as being rather silly or ill fitting. As a leading man he has really come on since reinventing himself as an action hero, and Blade is his best character in that regard. This film scales back on the complexities of his character and it damages the film a little bit but chances are that isn't what you came here for! Kristofferson is good but his character isn't really used well here. Perlman uses his screen presence well and he holds his own with Snipes. Varela is quite sexy but again the script doesn't use her relationship with Blade as well as it could do. Goss is very good in this role and it bodes well but I'd need to see him play a character (as opposed to a monster) to be able to judge if he has real ability as an actor – all the makeup also helped forget his Bros personae too. Jules is a very strange find but he looks good. Donnie Yen was, as he often is, poorly used – he has one small fight scene but considering the amount of martial arts action in this movie it would have been better to have actually used him in more of the action; wisely the film uses him better as the main fight choreographer.

Overall this is an enjoyable action movie with a horror twist. The plot is OK and has enough to it to be engaging despite having several themes that it should have done more with. The action is solid and enjoyable and not too hurt by the odd bit of poorly used CGI. A good cast helps and the action flows reasonably consistently to produce an enjoyable two hours of dark style.