Review: Predictable ‘Blade II’ cuts to the gore

Geoff Carter

Friday, March 22, 2002 | 9:07 a.m.

Blade

Grade: **

Starring: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman and Luke Goss.

Screenplay: David S. Goyer.

Director: Guillermo del Toro.

Rated: R for strong pervasive violence, language, some drug use and sexual content.

Running time: 110 minutes.

Movie times: http://www.vegas.com/movies/

I know vampires. I've worked with vampires for years. I've seen vampire gangsters, vampire truckers, vampire hookers, sat through two helpings of Anne Rice and taken multiple Hammer strikes. As a result, movies such as "Blade II" seem so familiar to me that I could almost believe I'd written them myself, from my own life experiences.

Similar to its predecessor, "Blade II" is violent, gory, and ultimately, a little enjoyable. There's something to be said for movies in which none of the primary characters can be killed, yet everyone's trying to kill each other; it's similar to watching "The McLaughlin Group." Bones crunch, blood flows and heads explode -- yet you watch without guilt or revulsion, content in the knowledge that not a one of these freaks is a human being.

Wesley Snipes returns as the title character, a half-human, half-vampire who is impervious to the things that kill other vampires -- sunlight, garlic, lots and lots and lots of bullets. He's indestructible, until the story needs him to not be. His partner, Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), is a crusty old hillbilly who creates a serum that keeps Blade from feeding on humans. He also builds his custom weaponry and keeps his muscle car tuned.

After a brief prologue that clears up the previous film's loose ends -- namely, the resurrection of Whistler -- "Blade II" gets down to cases. A new breed of vampire, led by the unstoppable Nomak (Luke Goss), is killing off vampires and humans alike.

Desperate, the Vampire Nation (whose "Godfather"-like intrigue was a highlight of the first film) turns to Blade, their most deadly enemy, for help.

Blade has good reason to be leery; the strike unit he's asked to lead against Nomak, the leather-clad Bloodpack, was originally trained to kill him. He levels the field by planting an explosive on one of the Bloodpack's heavies, Reinhardt (Ron Perlman) and waving the detonator at him whenever he acts up. United, however uneasily, the group descends into the vampire world and begins wreaking havoc.

It's in this breakneck, kinetic mush that director Guillermo del Toro manages to make himself heard. Stephen Norrington, the director of the first "Blade," had the luxury of working in a world where "The Matrix" didn't yet exist; del Toro has to keep his actors grounded, and his budget low. Instead of the enormous sets and visual dazzle of the first film, del Toro drops his crew into sewers, fighting zombies hand-to-hand -- the way it's supposed to be done.

Unfortunately, even del Toro can't move a film that has essentially no middle. Between the spectacular first and third acts, the characters more or less shuffle around Blade's workshop and a boisterous vampire nightclub, looking as if they could use a deck of cards. Kristofferson and Snipes try to enliven the mob, but they may as well be cracking wise at an audience of vacuum cleaners.

Despite the pacing issues, "Blade II" offers a pretty good time. It's not quite as good as the original, which in turn wasn't quite as good as most movies in which stakes are raised. In "Dracula A.D. 1972" Peter Cushing's Von Helsing warns of "horrors almost impossible to imagine."

Thirty years later, not only can we imagine such horrors, but we have a choice of viewing. "Blade II" is just another channel of the vampire network, and it's showing reruns.