BLADE II (2002) CGI stunts, I mean come on Yuck! Eeeeeeew! Aw man, that's just nasty! You didn't have to show that! I wasn't saying that out loud, but I was sure thinking it. In keeping with Hollywood's recent trend of trying to gross audiences out beyond expectations without incurring an NC-17, Blade II introduces the next level: body organs which look icky but can't be penalized for being specifically gory. In this movie, there's a (sort-of) vampire autopsy which reveals a puckering sphincter inside the torso of the stiff. In a bit of a tribute to Day Of The Dead, when blood gets near the sphincter, it starts puckering more, sucking, making horrible noises...yes, thank you, I've seen quite enough puckering sphincters for one movie. Blade II delivers its fair share of more conventional grue, of course. Like its predecessor, a goofy FX-filled action flick which only seems sillier each time I see it (but always a lot of fun), the accent here is mostly on Wesley Snipes killing as many vampires and icky nightcrawling things as are foolish enough to get near him. But I can't quite recommend Blade II like I would Blade; there's a lot to like, but this film manages to be twice as silly as its predecessor but not as much fun. So it's a few years after Blade, and Blade's been travelling the world, killing vampires and looking for the body of his buddy Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), who got vamp-bit in the last movie, shot himself, but since his name is in the credits, it's a gimme that he's still alive. He's alive all right, hangin' out in this big fluid tank, kept alive for years in what must be a very dull existence. Blade injects him with some sort of anti-vampirification drug, and he's fine, though he doesn't get along at all with Blade's new rapcore-listening handyman (Norman Reedus, reminding me VERY much of the kid from Terminator 2, very slightly grown up). This comes after a series of fights in which Blade kills (uh, re-kills) a whole bunch of vampires, of course. When vampires were killed in the last movie, they instantly disintegrated into CGI bones and dust. Here, they burst into sparks and ash like steel wool held over a Bunsen burner, before disintegrating into CGI bones and dust. A lot of movies make it really hard to kill vampires - not the Blade movies. One scratch with silver, and they're done for. No point staking anything in the heart; if you've got a silver stake, you could stake him in the foot, and he'd flare up like a matchbook. So Blade gets Whistler back home to his fortress of solitude, his batcave, his big oily warehouse where he makes new anti-vampire weapons, fixes him up, and awaits the inevitable personality clashes between his two handymen. Then, two members of Cirque Du Soleil (with swords) arrive and engage Blade in a fast and furious (and dainty) combat. This is where it started to lose me. Two problems. One - even if I hadn't seen the part in the trailer, it would've been easy to tell that this battle is just for the audience's amusement. At no point during this fight did anybody seem to be in danger of actually getting cut, let alone cloven in twain. It was like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, but without the pretty scenery. It's just one scene, but it was annoying. Two - CGI stunts. This is possibly the worst idea I've ever heard that involved CGI. CGI car crashes were bad enough. Now we're getting CGI humans doing stunts? I mean, I'm as tired of wirework-type shit as the next guy, probably a lot more! But this is not an improvement. This is just a bad, bad, bad idea. So, the two guys fighting Blade aren't there to fight, they're there to ask Blade to join with the vampires to help fight a new menace, the Reapers, which are like super-vampires, with bone casings over their hearts, as if the ol' stake-in-the-heart was much of an issue in these movies. I seem to remember this story happening at least once in just about every terrible Saturday-morning cartoon - Omnibots and Decepticons joining forces to fight...uh...G.I. Joe and COBRA. Anyway, there are a bunch of plot twists in the last half hour, most of which I had trouble swallowing, but that's about it for plot - the rest of the movie is basically one big long action scene which takes place over the course of about a day and a half. Blade teams up with a bunch of vampires which were originally trained to kill him, and together, they fight a whole bunch of Reapers. These Reapers are pretty disgusting fellas. Their lower jaws split apart to reveal barbs and tongues and all sorts of nasty shit. And there's that puckering-sphincter thing. They feed on the blood of vampires, just as vampires feed on the blood of humans, which in theory would be a good thing, but Blade is convinced that after the vampires are exterminated, very likely, they'd just move on to the next most tasty form of two-legged mutton. The fights are fun, but there is that CGI stunt problem, and maybe worse, there are pro wrestling moves in this movie. Seriously, Blade suplexes a guy in one scene, and is the recipient of a flying elbow drop in another. I'm ashamed that I still remember what these moves are called. And you know how you often hear about how action movies these days are playing too much like video games? It often feels that way, as the camera zips up and around and above and beneath people as they fly through the air, and there's one scene where a nearly-dead Blade is instantly restored to 100 health points by falling in a big pool of blood. Slight as this story is, it still squeezes in some obligatory aspects, like Blade's marginal sort-of-but-not-really romance with one of the vampires, played by Leonor Varela. Or the one guy in the team that bets bitten, but doesn't tell anybody. And, of course, there's another vampire rave, where vampires gather because vampires are all party animals with self-mutilation fetishes. Blade II is directed by Guillamero Del Toro, who previously gave us Cronos, another vampire movie which shares a few quirks with this one (like Ron Perlman, and a tendency to peek inside people's bodies). The movie looks better than the first film, more elaborate but less slick, with everything seemingly in a state of decay and disrepair; really, replace the Reapers with Giger's aliens, and you could have another Alien sequel. David Goyer's script takes itself a little too seriously, and that's part of why this movie isn't as fun as its predecessor, but there are still a bunch of moments to smile about, even when they're clearly hogwash (like when Blade, just told of one of the big plot twists, reveals ha ha, I knew all along, and things blow up). As usual, the show is stolen by the simian Ron Perlman, playing the biggest asshole (of course!) among the vampire goon squad. He seems like such a good sport about being so consistently underused. As for Snipes himself, his macho posturing is better than most people's, though I felt that when he had his sunglasses tossed to him, and he put them on, and his theme music didn't play...something was missing. BACK TO THE B's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE