Vampires you really don't wanna mess with!

Rating: 8/10 (29 July 2002)

Oh yeah, Oh yeah - this is right up there when ur talking serious action fare! Totally counter to the norm, this sequel is streets ahead of the original in terms of style, action, choreography...even testosterone tease. It even manages to flow on reasonably well from the original tale with Snipes awesome in his re-incarnation as the martial-arts vampire vigilante with a cool line in both armaments and fashion sense.
If one had gotten Ridley Scott, Dario Argento and John Woo together on a horror/action flick collaboration, BLADE II might have been the outcome. A tad low on plot development? Jeez, give me a break...who goes to see a flick like this looking for character and plot development for God's sake? Certainly not the theater full of actions fans I saw this with the other night. It gob-smacked the entire audience!
Few of you would not know by now that "Blade" is put on a new "case" this time...hired by the very vampires he hunts so well, to eradicate a bunch of genetically altered super-munchers that feed on their own kind. Most of the film plays pretty much as a re-run of ALIENS, even down to the new breed's retractable mandibles - half Ripleyesque, half PREDATOR unplugged! Derivative or not, this thing rocks. Very RESIDENT EVILish at times with arguably the most stunning fight sequences ever presented. By comparison, BLADE 1 is for wimps.
Call me sick, but I personally found the night-club sequence where some remarkably good looking female vampires were being disembowelled and/or having their backs ripped apart to satisfy the blood lust of their companions, totally erotic! As many have commented, the film generates a savage desire to be bitten oneself and to be able to share in this gratuitously violent existence. Ron Perlman, sartorially resplendant as the gothically unchallengable and virtually indestructible Reinhardt, has probably come up with his finest role here. The concluding confrontation between him and Blade is as good as anything I have ever seen. The viewer could never say they were short-changed here!
A celebration of vampiric evil, offhand I cannot nominate a more adrenalin pumping children-of-the-night tale. "Stylish" doesn't adequately cover it! I agree, the fx range from campy at best to straight out jaw-dropping (pun-intended) However the less effective sequences are thankfully very short. Leonor Varela hands us the best-looking euro-vampire yet (mind you, the setting is Prague!)and if ever she needs to bite someone....I will gladly take a ticket and stand in line!
My ONLY complaint is the pathetic and totally inappropriate last scene which single handedly destroys the credibility and emotional power of the previous one (the rising sun!) It was unnecessary and should have been cut leaving Blade (and the audience) alone that dawn, with just their own thoughts.
Tremendous effort all round. If you don't like it, you have no imagination, no taste for horror films and no right having been in the theater in the first place! No self-respecting vampire would look at you twice!