Gore fetishism, nonsense and disappointment (spoilers)

Rating: Null/10 (6 April 2002)

*****SPOILERS*****
The original Blade was hokum that managed to avoid mediocrity through its stunning opening sequence, new take on the vampire myth and the charisma of both hero (Snipes) and villain (Dorff). I loved it. I bought it. I still watch it.
This formulaic romp through the vampire world essentially wants have its cake and eat it through fusing developments on these themes with the machismo-stroking accoutrements of the buddy/team movie and the perverse thrill of the horror genre.
None of this works.
In order:
The opening Blade-based sequence (after a fairly neatly-staged incident in a blood bank) is a poorly montaged combination of a summary of previous events and new vampire destruction.
Borrowing heavily from computer games (shoot left, shoot right, change weapon...) it falls into the endless repetition common to that medium. After four flaming corpses in two minutes the only trick left is the close-up. Then the ultra-close-up. Then the slow-motion close-up. Then increasing the number of flaming corpses. Then showing those in slow motion. Repeat ad infinitum. The law of diminishing returns has never been so well demonstrated, as kick after punch after stab after bite after shot endlessly assaults the viewer, leaving them bored senseless. Any meaning in death is completely obviated.
Perhaps meaning can be found in the new take on the vampires.
Vampire recreation, shown as dancing in a shower of blood in the original film, is now extended to flesh play. Opening up a spine, or perhaps a vein. Kissing with razor blades. Interesting concept - if the flesh is eternally healable then why not experiment with pain as a sensation? Does it affect the rest of the film in any way? No, since the vampiric personality of the "traditional" vampire characters is muted beyond recognition. Physical effects (light +silver sensitivity and regeneration through blood) are the only interest, and then only for pyrotechnic effect. There is evidence of this being realised halfway through (better bolt on a "I've come to terms with what I am" line), but it is addressed to little effect.
Charisma is notably lacking. Blade becomes more violent poseur than ultra-hard uber-vampire. Nomak is a hunched Nosferatu/Frankenstein's monster hybrid with bad varicose veins.
Traditionally vampirism has always been about lust - the neck-biting, the consuming passion, the earthly physicality of blood and body - wheras these monsters seem to deal more in gluttony - the crunching of bone and marrow, the daily greed for a feed. The paradox of desire has become utterly one-sided. It says almost nothing about the human condition in this context. The patterns of lust could have been more richly fertile.
The buddy movie elements fail to hang together. Reinhardt, the leader of the "Blood Pack," fails to convince, impress, terrify, entertain - anything. The Blood Pack themselves have been drafted in from the Street Fighter School of Ethnic Representation - the kung fu one, the big hammer one, the girly one, and so on.
Scrap the lot of them and leave me the hero, please. They serve no purpose (other than providing for a larger range of action figure spin-offs) and, through their idiotic acts, seem to know it. Blade and Whistler was a dualism that worked - "he makes the weapons, I use 'em" perfectly apt.
Horror, meanwhile, seems to mean endless gore-porn close-ups of the Reaper mouth/jaw/tentacle thing and sections through the human body. The shot of the blinking lone head-section revelled in its ability to disgust. The full-body-splitting of ol' Reinhardt showed more than we possibly needed to know. Remember a time when the imagination filled in details more horrifying than what could be put on the screen? We appear to have passed that point at speed.
Other reviewers have pointed out the glaring stupidities of the film (light travelling around corners in a roaring flame-effect my favourite bone-headed moment. Who thought that up?) so I shall leave those to one side, and finish by apologising for all my waffle and sub-theorist posturings. I'm just trying to find out why, when I turned my brain off and sat down in the cinema for an hour-and-a-bit of mindless fun, I ended up with a film of jaded blood pornography. The sex metaphor explains it best - without the mind involved, the rest becomes pure mechanics. Excess of sensation can be amazingly entertaining, but this is an attempt at stimulus-response level sensory overload. One reviewer compared its excesses to Auschwitz. Given the level at which mutilation has become entertainment, I can see their point.
Liked the bike stunts and the ubiquitous sunglasses, but give it a miss.
T.