Topnotch action, great entertainment.

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2004)

I would like to express my bewilderment towards people who do not enjoy, or even like, the action genre, yet choose to see these movies just so they can criticize them for their shallow plot lines and general brainlessness. Moreover, it greatly annoys and perplexes me that these people then use their "expertise" to rate these movies poorly, and thus enforce the impression that we are, in fact, dealing with a lousy piece of movie-making, when the actual truth is that these people prefer films of completely different genres.
It should be a no-brainer that if the only movies you can appreciate fall into the category of films such as "Vertigo", "Citizen Kane" and the like, you're not going to have fun watching "Blade II". But then, you should know that, and not spend your hard-earned money on simple entertainment such as this! When one rates films such as "Blade", "Blade II", "Van Helsing", "Bloodsport", "Kickboxer" etc., one should consider how they perform in their own respective subcategory, that is, entertainment! It is neither appropriate nor is it productive to place these films on the same line with "artistic movies" because they simply weren't made to serve the same purpose; when one watches "Yojimbo", Kurosawa's masterpiece, for example, one needs to concentrate on the film fully to truly experience it. This rule does not apply to pure entertainment, because the general idea is that one can check one's brain at the counter and simply enjoy the ride; I can think of few pieces of work that provide the setting for action as efficiently as the presentation of Blade II does. After this, a rather lengthy (but desperately necessary) foreword, I will now look at this film and consider its merits against other movies in this subcategory of films called "action/entertainment".
In "Blade 2" the protagonist, Blade (Wesley Snipes), finds himself up against a new, deadly adversary and, needless to say, there's a lot of topnotch action in store for the entertainment-junkie. In terms of the visual style of the film, "Blade 2" fares even better than its predecessor; with its dark and stylistic presentation, this movie certainly is a treat for the eyes. In fact, it is hard to come up with any flaws as far as the presentation goes, because audiovisually this film is brilliant! Wesley's performance, can be summarized into one word; bravo! - he manages to be even more convincing with his one-liners than he was in the first movie, and certainly delivers in the action department as well!
All in all, well worth your time and your money...that is, if you enjoy action films!!
-Nikolas Belmont