Being the oldest genre of horror movie on the block, it’s hard to make a vampire flick look like it isn’t undead. Consequently, everything that’s come after 1922’s quintessential “Nosferatu” has had the inexplicable compulsion to reinvent monster lore wherever it sees fit (do garlic and crucifixes actually do anything anymore?).
1998’s “Blade,” was no exception, asserting that this nouveau-chic brood of baddies had a proclivity for leather clothing and raves — but these things only helped to make it a surprise hit. It was also helped by the casting of a chiseled Wesley Snipes, an always-serviceable actor whose action-hero status at the time was hovering dangerously close to that direct-to-video wasteland inhabited by Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal.
The film was enjoyable on most levels, but it never paused to enjoy its own silliness. From the loads and loads of exposition-laden monologues to Stephen Dorff’s laughable villain, it felt more like a James Cameron side-project than B-movie camp.
Fortunately, “Blade II” takes everything the original got wrong and drenches it in stylish action, kinetic fight sequences, and a much-needed dose of wit. Snipes reprises his role as the day-walking Blade, this time being forced to fight alongside the vampire sect in order to take down a rapacious new horde of uber-vampires. These “reapers” feed on the living and undead, they have mandibles that would make Steven Tyler blush, and, of course, they know kung-fu.
Blade is joined by a specially-trained gaggle of vampire slayers, among them a hot-headed upstart who can’t stand working with the enemy and a mysterious vixen who suggests that Blade may need a little more companionship than Kris Kristofferson. The daywalker and his crew venture into the sewers to battle their foes, returning above ground only to find out the true reason for their battle is not what they expected.
The story (which is surprisingly better than the original) does little more than move Snipes from impressive setpiece to setpiece, but it thankfully doesn’t feel the need stop every five minutes to explain why. Rather, director Guillermo del Toro (“Mimic”) lets the action do the talking. Blade does everything short of breakdancing the reapers to death in his pursuit of the most stylish way to kill a vampire, and it makes for a great watch.
Another plus for the sequel is that it carries a self-conscious smirk, aware of its cartoonish excessiveness but always seeking to entertain. Verbal jabs between Blade and his sidekicks make the film’s downtime much more bearable and keep the tone tongue-in-cheek.
The plot makes several jumps in logic (why all the shooting if bullets don’t work on the reapers?), but del Toro keeps things moving so quickly there’s no time to care. To be sure, “Blade II” is highly unlikely to canonize him alongside the likes of F. W. Murnau, but any film featuring the use of the word “nipplehead” probably isn’t striving to reinvent the vampire wheel in the first place. Grade: B
