Movie Review: Blade 2

Blade 2 

Directed by Guillermo Del Toro

Written by David S. Goyer

Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman, Leonor Varela, Norman Reedus

Release Date March 25th, 2002 

Published March 24th, 2002

Back in 1998, Blade modernized the tired vampire genre with pure balls to the wall adrenaline and Pre-Matrix quality fight scenes. Forget the brain-dead script and Stephen Dorff's screen chewing, Blade was awesome, pure entertainment and nothing more. Now comes the sequel, and it far surpasses the original. It's bigger, dumber, and even more entertaining.

Blade 2 reintroduces us to our hero, half-vampire, half-human, all-vampire hunter Blade, played by the ultracharismatic Wesley Snipes. He is searching for his mentor, Kris Kristofferson, who we believed to be dead in the first film. We come to find out that he is alive and has been turned into a vampire. Blade finds his mentor and rehabs him with a special serum. Whether the serum worked remains in question for the balance of the film, providing some fun suspense.

But that’s just the beginning. The vampire nation has offered Blade a truce and wants a face-to-face meeting to discuss a plague worse than vampires. It seems there is a mutated vampire virus called the Reaper strain that mutates vampires into stronger, more volatile beings, who feed on both humans and vampires. Blade realizes the reapers are a bigger threat than vampires and agrees to lead a team of vampires known as the Bloodpack, highly trained vamps who had been trained to hunt Blade but now must take orders from him. 

Thankfully, we are spared introductions to each member of the pack save for Reinhardt (Ron Perlmen) and Nyssa, played by the gorgeous Leonor Varela. Norman Reedus rounds out the cast as Blade's lackey and gadget guy. The film is stylish and sly with a fantastic soundtrack of rock-rap claptrap that hits all the right notes, always spiking right as Blade snaps someone’s neck or breaks someone’s limbs. The film is ultraviolent but in a completely cartoonish way, it’s a nod to its comic book roots.

Director Guiermillo Del Toro keeps the pace up and the plot to a minimum providing a perfect balance between gory violence and dark humor. The film never takes itself seriously and never asks the audience to do so either and it is that element that makes this film easier to enjoy than say Resident Evil or Tomb Raider. Blade doesn't care too much about story or character development, it relies on star Wesley Snipes to make the action credible and entertaining. Snipes exceeds expectation, oozing charisma and a dark sense of humor that the character lacked in the first film.

Blade 2 is endlessly entertaining though probably not for everyone. It definitely worked for me and I think it's one of the best films I've seen this year.