The Gore Parade
By Michael Sean McGowan


Wesley Snipes has a bloody good time as the back-again hero in the comic book potboiler "Blade II" (film review)


    Most of the pleasure that can be had from Blade II is the filmmaker’s esteemed expression that he is making nothing more than neon-fried comic book pulp fiction burned onto extra glossy paper. For its part, it is refreshingly free of the kind of “we are gothic art” pretension that made Queen of the Damned either painful or laughable. Blade II is a good few miles from goth and on a completely separate continent from art, and after seeing his last down-in-the-sewers monster mash, Mimic, I distinctly feel that director Guillermo del Toro wouldn’t have it any other way. This isn’t an Anne Rice-inspired blood and mirrors horror of manners: this is an entrail feast with the extra muck piled on.



    After the first Blade (admittedly, unseen by me) was a smash hit, one could have predicted that the sun would rise in the east with less certainty than that a sequel would follow. Gleefully, Blade II grapples to the jugular of its comic book roots. The villains (or, so we’re told in the beginning) are a civilization of vampires with their own language, logo, and even corporate-looking headquarters complete with private helicopters (insert your own Enron joke here). Sworn to eliminate them (but not all of them, as long as the franchise holds out) is Blade, a half-man, half-vampire badass who in the tradition of modern comic book badasses, the incident at Columbine not withstanding, get their digs in being decked out in long, black trench coats and shades that seem to have a snarl of their own. And, of course, since this is the post-Matrix era of comic book sci-fi filmmaking, everyone in the film, including the oozing, mutant vampires spawning from the sewers, seems to know kung-fu.



    The oozers in question are known simply as “Reapers” (as if more explanation is needed). In the opening we see one of these monsters (he looks like a stoned druid) turn the table on a trio of vampires who were targeting him for an early withdrawal at a dilapidated blood bank. The Reapers, we’re told, are like mutant vampires- one character compares them to “crack addicts” who are insatiable in their feeding and since they are still basically vampires, anyone drained by a Reaper will soon become one himself. Also, they have a really neat trick where the bottom of their jaws fly open revealing a “tongue” of squirming, purple tentacle, now contradicting my belief that since Alien no one would be able to do anything more interesting with the mouths of movie monsters.



    The Reapers are feeding on vampires, which said vampires deem as totally unacceptable- why else would they employ their arch-enemy Blade to help them wipe out the Reapers. Of course, part of it may have to do with the way one vampire princess (Leonor Varela) gets the hots for Blade, but this is one angle of the story I would prefer to leave alone since my picture of a passionate affair with a member of the undead would seem comparable to a midnight tryst with a Coke machine.



    But, hey, that’s just me.



    All of this is little more than set up for countless set pieces involving humans, vampires, and Reapers alike being shot, gutted, disemboweled, dismembered, decapitated, and charred to ashes like dry tinder- and I’ve barely gotten past the opening credits. What is to admire, though, is that the chaos is handled with a smirking, cool certainty. Unlike most butt-kicking films, del Toro choreographs the fights well enough for us to follow who is being dissected by whom. Even better is the way no action or movement is wasted. Every kick, slice, punch, or turn of the wrist is done with a celebratory quickness that screams like an exclamation mark. The Matrix turned martial arts into fodder for an iMac-inspired generation of hackers dreaming of making movies on their home PCs. Del Toro is more raw, more real, making his stylized violence a howl of the ultimate pop culture orgasm.



    Blade II is slight fun and its gloss exceeds its substance in value. The script seems more than a little distracted at times. In one scene, as Blade and his grudgingly recruited vampire commando squad search for Reapers in the darkened corridors of a vampire nightclub, one of them clicks on a flashlight to search an attic. I don’t know whether this says less of her hunt-at-night qualities as a nightwalker or the club’s ability to install light switches.



    Wesley Snipes, even with his steely don’t-mess-with-me attitude, can still conjure up memories of a talented actor from movies like Down in the Delta. Maybe for an actor of his caliber, movies like Blade II are an easy paycheck or a way to have a little fun. But one also hopes that even the most page-bound comic book hero knows that every voyeuristic thrill, especially the audience’s, can be measured on a stop watch. Blade II is good fun, but its charms are far from immortal. B