Rapid Review: Blade II (2002)

“We’ll play along for now. They’ll take us in deeper than we’ve ever been. Get a chance to see how their world really ticks.”
– Blade

SYNOPSIS: Reapers, a new breed of vampire that feed off humans and vampires, emerge with plans for world domination and Blade must team with the Bloodpack, an elite team of vampire warriors specifically trained to hunt him, in order to defeat this new menace. – via IMDB

The second installment of these movies is usually widely regarded as the best. I am sure this is because it happened to get a bigger budget, had a decent plot (though it was nothing revolutionary or supremely complex – doesn’t change the fact that it had one) and because it had a lot of action packed in. Blade II has aged pretty damn well, and corrected on a lot of things that were wrong in its predecessor. Plus, there was Norman Reedus for me to look at, even though he was a little sketchy (as a character – still pretty, so I am not complaining). The reasoning and logic was a bit buggered in here (like how Nyssa just immediately knew all sorts of things about this new breed of vampire without actually examining it or running tests). But then this is usually the case with action flicks. The dialogue was still a bit cheesy, but again, this is just inordinate amounts of fun and it has been put together very well. Gotta say, Ron Perlman truly pisses me off. He is such an annoyance and this movei was no exception in my mind. Whistler returning is something I have always appreciated, I like the humour he brings to the movie. Typical Del Toro style, he goes a little overboard on the CGI in some places (I am looking specifically here at certain fight scenes), but is still much better than a lot of his English speaking films (truly – I do prefer his native work). Blade II is shot well, looks great, has awesome action sequences and choreography, and is well worth the watch, especially seeing as the vampires are nasty and get uglier if they are the new breed. I reiterate again, no twinkles to be seen. Whoop! I think these movies will always have a soft spot in the hearts of those that grew up watching them. And if you didn’t watch them growing up and haven’t watched them before, that is something I seriously recommend you rectify as soon as possible!