A Bloodsucking Turkey (Blade II (DVD))

Member Name: gothiron

Product:	Blade II (DVD)
Date:	04/04/02 (87 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wesley Snipes looks dead neat in black leather, a new career for Luke Goss, it made the people I work with look normal!

Disadvantages: The Plot, The Editing, please don't make Blade 3

This wasn't probably the most appropriate viewing for Good Friday but with the usual rows caused by a visit to B&Q and the prospect of naff all on the telly, I decided to toss my fiver over the counter at our local flea pit and see Blade 2, the sequel to, yes you've guessed it, Blade.

Blade was a comic book hero who was a vampire slayer - a forerunner to Buffy but more violent, who was part vampire himself but kept the "condition" under control with a serum. Being only part Vampire and therefore a Daywalker he was immune to garlic, silver and daylight and could wipe out his kin in blood as merrily as he liked.

So that was a brief history lesson, now on to the main event. Well, where do I start? Given that this review could have anyone of the following as a title: A Bloody Waste of Time, Bet You Didn't Think They Made "B" Movies Anymore or Amateur, Anaemic and Awful; I think that you are going to get the direction that this review is going to be heading.

Wesley Snipes revived (or should that be resurrected) his previously success role as Blade and managed to look suitably menacing and controlled - a bit like Batman on prozac, and no one can deny that he looks great in a bit of black leather, but there is no disguising that this plot seemed to have borrowed heavily from everything that had gone before it, and learnt nothing by it.

A brief synopsis of the plot for you: Blade is instructed by Ruling Body of the Vampire Nation (sounds like it should have ended up in Ali G) to help track down a new breed of evil called Reapers who feast upon both humans and vampires. Some people are just so greedy at the help-yourself-buffet! To assist him in the quest is the best of the undead, the Bloodpack - a kind of vampire SAS whose whole purpose until the unholy alliance was formed, was to kill Blade himself. Keep your friends close but enemies closer and all of that.

Every cliché in the boo
k, every potential twist in the plot (and I lose that word very loosely) so clearly signalled that Railtrack should take note and all in all I was being to wonder whether this was meant to be a spoof as it was slowly becoming laughably bad. There was the bid to take over the world, the dark and sordid East European blood banks, the blue toned lighting, the busty gothic girlies (sorry Lookaroundcafe, no blood-babe lesbian scenes) and not to mention the obligatory double cross (if you can do that to a Vampire, I would have thought that one cross would have been enough) between sworn enemy and foe.

Clumsy editing, poor continuity - there's nothing like seeing the adhesive glinting on the cranial implant or a seeming comatose Blade being dragged along by his good ole pal, Whistler - whose reappearance for plot purposes really does make Bobby in the shower seem believable, only for Blade to be clearly doing most of the walking. There is a whole sense that this film either suffered from a change of director halfway through or a rush to get it released as most websites don?t have a certificate rating (it's an 18) and the blurb on pearlanddean.com gives a different view on how the Reapers suck blood (through their hands) than is actually shown in the film. Knowing this detail now does actual make sense of a rather nasty set of scars that one of the Bloodpack pick up though!

My biggest gripe was that for an alleged gorefest, it lacked blood! Or rather, it lacked colour. The nightclub scene which was surely meant to be fairly stomach churning (certainly was for one poor chap)was just so sterile. Yes there was blood; no there wasn't any sense of horror or terror. I saw the whole thing without shutting my eyes once and I'm a total coward! The sheer quantity of exploding, withering, sliced "n" diced vampires began to make it all seem the same. You see one uv-disintegrated vampire; you've seen them all.

I know th
at some sequels are hailed as being better than the original, but this clearly isn't one of them. Either Blade 1 was a vastly superior film, with cutting edge effects and a superb scriptwriter and director, or else Blade 2 really was appallingly weak. I'm sure it will make its money as I'm convinced that 19-21 year blokes and their mates will lap it up, but if you wanted a seriously good vampire horror, I'd wait until Queen of the Damned comes out - that looks awesome!

An anaemic film but with one glimmer of hope - the performance of chief villain (or was it hero - in the end, it all got confusing) Nomak. The original Reaper was played by former pretty boy band member, Luke Goss from Bros. I know that the younger Dooyou members are thinking who?, but take it from me, they were massive in the 80s. He gave a compelling performance and didn't over-blood the black pudding and was the perfect foil to Blade and in the end, I was willing him to be victorious, which in a way he was. But I won't spoil it for you, go suffer it yourself if you really want to know.

It wasn't all bad. The fight sequences, borrowing heavily from Crouching Tiger, were good and had tremendous energy. It was a shame that when the special effects took over, the characters resembled a Playstation game but with worse animation. The sound track was excellent and provided much of the atmosphere for the plot when acting failed to pull through, a mention to Fat Boy Slim for sterling work. The make up was good, even if the Chief Lord of the Un-Dead did look as though his skin was based on Stilton cheese spread over marble.

And it really didn't help having Cat from Red Dwarf in the cast as well. At one particularly tense moment, all I could here from the people around me was "it is, it's Cat from Red Dwarf" Shame that they didn't get Holly to write the plot.

I see from reading some of the other reviews, and
I appear to be in a minority of Blade 2 bashers, that Blade 3 is planned - please don't do it, only Gillette can make 3 Blades a success story.

Summary: