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March 26, 2002
Blade 2
Well, it's a fun flick.
Blade 2 picks up two years after the first Blade film, with the titular hero looking for Whistler, the man who saved/trained him. If you recall the first film, you'll remember that Whistler was tortured and "turned" by vampires, but Blade was not able to bring himself to kill Whistler. His mentor demanded the gun, and the camera followed Blade away, and you heard the shot.
But you never saw the body.
Two years later, Blade finds his mentor, who has been kept in some sort of stasis, so he hasn't actually become a vampire.
I'm not really giving a lot away with this -- this is about the first half-hour (or less) of the flick.
But guess what? That all has very little to do with the plot of the movie!
Blade is asked by the head of an ancient (might be the oldest... who cares, it's the plot device!) vampire family to help them track down and kill the latest mutant strain of vampires, ones that feed on other vampires, and make more like themselves. He's asked to team up with a group that has been training for two years to fight HIM, take him out (their most feared enemy!), but now they both have a common enemy, right?
Right.
This film was in no way as good or as fun as the first film. It tries to inject some emotion, some love or some other unnamed (and unacted) emotion into Blade, when all we really want to see is him doing some of his standard vampire-ass-kicking action.
And I've been spoiled. I've seen some excellent Hong Kong martial arts films. Not as many as I'd like, alas, but I do know what constitutes a good scene. This movie may have had some good fight scenes, but they were lost in the editing. Hollywood seems to think that lots of quick cuts and rapid movement makes an action scene so much better.
Let me tell ya, honey, it does NOT.
I spent too much time trying to who was fighting whom, who got hit (it doesn't help when they all wear black), and what the fuck was going ON to really enjoy the action scenes.
Ron Perlman chews the scenery as a member of the Blade Hit Squad. And there's a lot of scenery to chew -- according to the IMdb, they filmed some in Prague, and it looks wonderfully dark and dirty. The other actors are there, but not really worth mentioning.
And the surprise plot twist? Saw it coming. Wasn't a surprise. Either of them. If they were supposed to be twists.
Still, it was worth the price of a matinee, which is what I paid for it. Money's worth in entertainment, which is all I really ask for.
Rating: Matinee Price
[movie ratings will be Cable, Rental, Matinee, Full Price, and Any Price, in ascending order, by the way. And only the worst get to be rated like Highlander 2 - "wait until it comes out on cable, and then go and rent another movie."]
Posted by Julia at March 26, 2002 10:24 PM