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Blade 2
(Reviewed March 11, 2002)
-
The first "Blade" movie was not bad, and certainly better than anyone might have expected it to be. Wesley Snipes was the icy cool badass half-vampire/half-human with a definite dislike for the fanged side of his family tree, Kris Kristofferson was his crusty mentor, and the whole affair was pulled off with a lot of noirish style. The movie's only weakness was an interminable final fight scene; you know, the kind you see in almost every violent movie these days, in which Our Hero gets the crap decisively and brutally kicked out of him for 10 minutes before finally marshalling some untapped reserve of hidden strength and emerging victorious.
"Blade 2," unfortunately, is an entire movie's worth of those kind of fight scenes. As Itchy and Scratchy might say, "They fight, and bite, and fight and bite and fight." It is hard to believe that this installment was written by the same guy who wrote the first "Blade" (David Goyer, who also scripted the excellent "Dark City"). The plot this time is repetitious and dumb. Put it this way: You are hunting mutant vampires. You know that absolutely none of your weapons has any effect on them EXCEPT ONE: a souped-up flashlight that mimics the sun's rays. So is it very damned likely that you and your team would bother expending thousands upon thousands of ammo shells that you know will not get the job done, or would you simply wave your all-powerful flashlight around? The latter, right? Not these guys.
Still, Snipes manages to be so likable that he almost pulls off the movie on charm alone. Even though he never cracks a smile, he always seems to be on the verge of turning to the camera, saying "Do you believe this stuff?", and winking. Plus the chick vampire he teams up with is incredibly hot, even though she is covered head to toe in black leather for the duration. And the production design is terrific, set in boarded-up cathedrals, creepy sewers and the high-tech headquarters of what looks like Vampires Incorporated.
If you are into loud, constant, video-game-style violence, you could do worse--but a little more plotting and thinking would have been nice for those of us who are older than 14.
Back Row Grade: C-
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