Review of Blade II (2002) by Colginator — 10 Aug 2015

After the great success of the first Blade film and before the horrific disaster that was Blade Trinity, Guillermo Del Toro took the reigns of the Blade franchise for it's second outing to turn Blade into the first Marvel movie franchise. In spite of this being Torro's first venture in to action, he proves that he is clearly suited for the genre already having the trademarks that make him such a great director, including his flair for cool designs and his ability to create stylish and focused action sequences.

Taking place 2 years after the first Blade film, a mutation has occurred within the vampire community that causes them to mutate into a new species called Reapers. These creatures are stronger, faster and have a far more extreme blood lust, sucking both the blood of vampires and humans at a rapid rate. Thus Blade and his team of vampire hunters are recruited by an elite squad of vampires called the blood pack, to hunt down the Reapers and save both vampires and humans from this new threat.

Once again Snipes is on top form as the Blade, bringing the right mix of humour and sword wielding mastery needed to bring the comic book character to life on screen. But the best new addition to the film is the inclusion of the Bloodpack. Their incorporation into the film creates an interesting dynamic as they were originally trained to kill the daywalker, but put in this new situation are forced to work with him. Thus we're basically waiting for the timb bomb to go off throughout the film, waiting for the inevitable double crossing to begin. Although whilst they all look like the badass vampires they're supposed to and the team as a whole are effective in the story, several members of the team don't seem to get any real screen time. Out of the 8 in the team only 2 of them are being given more than the bare minimum amount of dialogue, making it too clear the rest of them are the vampire equivalent to a nameless red coat.

But the members of the Bloodpack that the film does give time to live up to their badass looks. Ron Perlman plays the leader Reinhardt, who brings his usual tough guy attitude to the role, whilst sharing a cool unfriendly rivalry with Blade, where the pair constantly try to oneup each other. Then there's Nyssa who acts as the main liaison with Blade and his team. Whilst her role in the film is fairly typical as the standard love interest in spite of sharing little chemistry with Snipes, the character still has some great moments through her fight scenes and an interesting side plot exploring where her loyalties should lie.

Toro takes all his talents from directing horror movies into the action genre, with the Reapers slit lipped mouths looking like they could have been ripped directly from a horror film. He's also able to adapt to the action genre by incorporating a constant sense of movement in his camera movement, making the already fast paced swordplay even more exciting. The only downside with the action is the CGI, which at times is rather chunky and ends up making Blade look more like an action figure. However it's so well implemented to maintain the flow of the fight that the effects never distract from the enjoyment of the scene.

Not everything in this film works, with some characters having no real purpose and some poorly explained story elements like Whistler coming back from death in the first film. But what does work is so great that it's easy to look past these flaws. This is by far the best Blade film by delivering on all the cool things that made the first film so enjoyable, with it's fast paced action and awesome designs, whilst improving on the formula with even more impressive action sequences and a great story that leads up to an extremely satisfying pay off.