Blade II is sort of a difficult movie to review. On the one hand, it's really not very good. On the other hand, as an example of the popular horror/vampire/slasher/action/ zombie genre, it's better than a lot of its contemporaries.
This is mostly due to the visual flair of the director, Guillermo Del Toro, the independent director of such low-budget pictures as Cronos and the recent The Devil's Backbone.
You can actually see a lot of the influence of Cronos in Blade II. Both are vampire stories that play with the traditions and conventions of vampire lore. Both are shot in heavy shadow with interesting visual touches. Both have similar-looking, white-skinned vampire villains with pussy skin.
The difference, of course, is that in Blade II Del Toro has a lot more money, which means he gives us a lot more and better looking vampires. Their design owes a lot to the alien in Alien, John Carpenter's monster in his 1982 remake of The Thing, and, most pointedly, to the vampire in F.W. Murnau's silent 1922 classic, Nosferatu.
But if these vampires are derivative of other film monsters, who cares? Their purpose is to hiss, drink blood, look hideous and, of course, be sent to vampire hell in bloody violent explosions by Blade, the half-vampire, half-human superhero played by Wesley Snipes.
In this sequel Blade teams up with his enemy vampires from the first film (who look fabulous) to fight an even slimier bunch of disgusting vampires. These new villains are immune to those old-hat vampire vanquishers, silver and garlic, and are trying to recombine their DNA to achieve ultra-imperviousness to all weapons, even sunlight. (There seems to be a lot of recombining of DNA going on in these kinds of movies.)
There are some human bad guys, too; an Eastern European type (are we ever going to give those Eastern Europeans a break? The Cold War ended 13 years ago), though I couldn't figure out why he wanted to involve himself with these super-vampires, since he must know that his ultimate fate was to become a midnight snack.
And, of course, everyone involved operates in a gigantic technological fortress/corporation, the kind you see in all the James Bond movies with helipads and helmeted henchmen running around who insist on firing automatic weapons at the vampires even though the movie establishes almost immediately that these creatures are resistant to bullets.
Underneath this corporation run miles of filthy sewers and catacombs, as if these sorts of corporations, despite their billions, couldn't afford to build on top of anything safer or cleaner. Though underground, the catacombs seem to allow light to filter in the most convenient places. This serves the dual purpose of allowing Blade and his crew access to sunlight whenever they need to use it as a weapon, and also lets Del Toro play with light and shadow in the sewers just as Carol Reed did in The Third Man.
So the plot is ridiculous, but by now, after decades of these silly action pictures, everybody knows that the plot is supposed to be ridiculous. The question is whether the movie has enough style and action to fly. Blade II has plenty of both - too much probably, since by the end of the movie I was worn out and on the verge of boredom.
But for those who like their movies with floor-to-ceiling action, this is your movie.
Del Toro, in fact, shows some panache for directing action sequences. The fight scenes are very well choreographed. And the director throws in a few neat touches to keep things uber-cool, like speeding up the camera while the characters scamper along the walls like insects.
And then there is Snipes who, as usual, is an unmitigated bad-ass. Snipes has always oozed screen presence and charisma, and he can act, too, though he doesn't get much of a chance to show off his chops in Blade II. But he does lend the movie certain gravity, which is crucial since the hero has to look like he's taking things seriously if we're going to buy any of the fantasy. Snipes is also smashing in the fight scenes (literally) and looks very convincing using martial arts. Oh, and his abs look fabulous.
The other actors are effective, too, particularly Ron Perlman (who was also in Cronos) as a ruthless vampire, and the old pro Kris Kristofferson, who somehow survives some of the worst dialogue foisted on an actor in a long time. The movie throws in a few babes for good measure, including the fantastic beauty Leonor Varela, who holds her own opposite Snipes.
So, there you go. If you want to see lots of cool-looking vampires duke it out on some pretty fancy sets and explode in bloody fireballs, Blade II is for you. Personally, I like my action pictures to make sense and to have some human interest. But I'm probably not the best judge since, when it comes to vampire movies, I've really got nothing at stake.
Reach Michael Green at starbury@cox.net.
