Top comic book sequel to a top film.

Rating: 8/10 (29 January 2007)

Blade II starts as the half Vampire half human Vampire hunter Blade (Wesley Snipes) continues his 2 year long quest to find his friend Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) whom the Vampire race have held captive for that time after the events in the original Blade (1998), Blade finally has tracked him down & frees him. One night back at his base a group of highly trained Vampires known as the 'Bloodpack' infiltrate it & they deliver a message to Blade that the Vampire king Eli Damaskinos (Thomas Kretschmann) wants a truce between the two warring sides, Blade agrees & the Bloodpack takes him to their headquarters to speak with Damaskinos personally who wants Blade to help him & his race exterminate a new breed of Vampire known as a Reaper. This new type of Vampire needs to feed on fresh blood every few hours & preferably Vampire blood but once they have wiped the Vampie race out they will turn their attention to the human race, they are immune to silver & garlic & infect their prey with a virus that turns them into Reapers, in a matter of months the whole planet could be overrun with the things. It' up to Blade & the Bloodpack to destroy the source of the virus, the original carrier named Jared Nomak (Luke Goss) before it's too late...
This American German co-production was directed by Guillermo del Toro & is the second outing for the popular comic book character Blade, personally I think the original Blade is complete class & I was slightly worried by this sequel as I thought that it would be a huge disappointment but I'm happy to report that Blade II is almost as good as the original which was more than a little bit surprising. Anyway, David S. Goyer returns to pen the sequel & he does a fine job again as this time around he has more scope & money to play with as he makes everything that little bit bigger, louder & more ambitious. The film moves along like a rocket yet still manages to have a good story which has more to it than you may expect, the character's are good & the uneasy truce between Blade & the Vampires is well used & is always there as an undercurrent, there are a few twists & turns as people aren't quite what they first seem & things aren't quite as straight forward as they seem, there are also some neat ideas here particularly the Reapers themselves whose jaws split apart to reveal snake like tongues. I liked the ending which isn't the usual Hollywood 'happily ever after' type thing & the script also does a good job of making the main villain Jared quite a sympathetic character who in essence is just a victim of his circumstances although deliciously evil at the same time. Overall I was very impressed with Blade II.
Director Toro does a great job & while I can say this has a decent script with better character's & narrative than your average Hollywood no-brainer Blade II just wouldn't be any good if it were not for it's gore, violence, fights, chases, monsters, glamorous sleek chrome plated weaponry of various descriptions & it's cool attitude. Blade II has a fantastic look about it with great production design, it seems to alternate between dark run down decrepit sewers & back alleys to ultra sleek, modern & shiny scientific labs & complexes & it's a perfect mix & Toro manages to get the blend just about perfect, visually Blade II is top-notch. The weapons are suitably over-the-top & used to good violent effect throughout with the fights & action scenes extremely well choreographed & actually pretty exciting, the costumes are cool too with Leanor Varela standing out in her skin tight leather outfit at the end. There's plenty of blood & gore here, there's loads of the red stuff splashed around, there's plenty of disintegrating Vampires, people sliced in half, someone has the top of their head cut off, someone is blown up & there's a yucky autopsy scene. The body count in this must be pretty damned high.
With a supposed budget of about $55,000,000 Blade II looks the absolute business & has that sleek ultra well made Hollywood polish to it with great cinematography, top special effects, the usual catchy techno music to accompany the numerous set-pieces & excellent production values. The acting is decent enough, Snipes as Blade is suitably emotionless & delivers the one-liners with the appropriate enthusiasm. Kristofferson puts in a good shift while Ron Perlman equally so, ex-boy band singer Luke Goss is an unexpected choice for but rather impressive bad guy, Varela makes for a nice looking love interest & Norman Reedus is good & pretty likable as Scud.
Blade II is an absolute top action horror hybrid big budget popcorn film that's a very worthy sequel, it's as simple & straight forward as that. Make sure you watch it as soon as you can, followed by Blade: Trinity (2004) & Blade: The Series (2006) stars someone called Sticky Fingaz...