Familiar, different and just as good as the first.

Rating: 7/10 (27 January 2015)

The beauty of "Blade II" is that it works both as a sequel and as a standalone. With just a few minutes of intro, you know what you're getting walking into with this, either way. Snipes, for his part, falls back in easily and does what he does best. He's the perfect Blade. And Guillermo Del Toro has his fingerprints all over this thing with the Reapers. It's much more stylish than the original, but it's also shamelessly ridiculous. They retconned Whistler back to life and didn't even blink doing it (although, try to imagine this movie without Kristofferson). And that's really part of its charm. There's plenty of bad CGI here (Snipes is full-on digital in a few scenes), but then again, it was 2002 - they were computerizing everybody back then. There's also Ron Perlman, so there's that going for it.
But when all is said and done, this is a pure action movie, and there's a constant flow of energy. Fight scenes and Blade movies go hand-in-hand, and this one's got some great ones.
7/10