I decided that I wanted to keep my Blade Trilogy going so I watched the second installment in the franchise Blade II. For my recap and review of the original Blade (1998) click here http://myreviewsbyjane.blogspot.com/2013/10/blade-1998-recap-review.html
Blade II pick up with Blade, played by Wesley Snipes several years after the ending of the original Blade movie. The ambiguity of Whistler, Kris Kristopherson, is cleared up by saying he bitten but then taken by the vampires before he actually died. Blade and his new sidekick a young man named Scud, played by Norman Reedus, have been tracking Whistler through eastern Europe and Russia, killing vampires along the way. He finally catches up to Whistler, injects him with the antiserum to hopefully kill off any of the vampire virus and revert him back into a human. A vampire clan comes to Blade to ask him to help them hunt down a new post vampire creature, called a reaper vampire, because they are unable to handle him and that this special force that they have had been training to try and take down Blade. Blade agrees only because this new reaper vampire hunts both vampires and humans but only turns vampires he bites into reaper vampires. Blade also wants to learn more about the vampires and their culture that has been hidden to him up until this point. Throughout the movie there is lots of animosity between the vampire task force, which is lead by Reinhart, played by Ron Pearlman. There is also the sudo-love interest thing between Blade and Nysaa, played by Lenor Vaela, which is stupid because she is a vampire and Blade hates vampires. While they hunt down and kill the reaper vampires it is discovered that they were created by the elder vampire to try and create a new vampire race, from his DNA, which is immune to the normal vampire things, such as silver, sunlight, and garlic. Meanwhile the loyalty of Whistler and Scud is questions and hinted that someone is not who they claim to be. During the battles between all of the vampires, reaper vampires, and Blade most everyone is killed and it is discovered that Scud was working with the vampires and that Blade new about his subterfuge from the beginning.
I like this Blade movie but not really as much as the first one. The action was kicked up a bunch of notches and they try to get more creative with the plot but it is all really quite pointless in story because it is all about the coolness of Blade and the fighting sequences. Blade is all that was that cool in this movie, with the pattern cut into his hair and head tattoos, the more fit physique, the poses, sword fighting and of course the sunglasses. Wesley Snipes is great as Blade, Kris Kristofferson continues to be grizzly as Whistler, and you have the joy of a young Norman Reedus (who is now very well know for his interactions with Zombies).
There is more production value in this movie but for me the use of special effects and computer graphics is more obvious and poor. I don't like the change they made in how the vampires turn to dust after being stabbed, for me it is not as well done as in the first one. There are also parts where I could see them cut between computer generated actors and the fight sequences, specifically when Blade and Nysaa sword fight in front of the wall of lights.
My Rating: 2
Hold Up Rating: The special effects are obviously older but they look more video game that truly terrible. There is more use of computer type things in this movie, which again are out of date. Some of the rough around the edges things may be due to the improvement of the television now a days and how this movie wasn't made in the time of HD>
No comments:
Post a Comment