Del Toro’s vampire show is all action no substance.
Come opening weekend, most movie-goers who will have flocked over to see the second installment in the Blade franchise and will automatically be seduced by the battle sequences, the nifty sci-fi gadgetry, the cool special effects and, oh, of course- the film’s favourite protagonist Blade played by Wesley Snipes who doesn’t have to dig too deep into his repertoire of fine acting talents to reprise the role of the bad-ass vampire killer with a pissed-off attitude. But for the rest of us, there is not much happening here in Guillermo del Toro’s Blade 2.
The major disappointment is in the storyline-it lacks heavily in the creativity department, figuring that visuals and a healthy techno-driven soundtrack can somehow make the viewers forget about a grade school level narrative just doesn’t cut it with most audiences. The film starts off with this comic-book testimonial where Wesley Snipes’ Blade narrates his reason for being, his past and his history-which are all key to explaining why he must fight until the world is safe from all sources of evil. Along the way he must figure out how to destroy this new kind of vampire-an easy solution that takes forever to figure out and while he is at it he makes new friends and enemies and don’t forget a love interest draped in leather and dangerous curves played by Leonor Varela (The Tailor of Panama). Along for the battle are an all-star team of fierce looking fighters and Whistler the hillbilly with a shotgun and his Grizzly Adams hair-do played by Kris Kristofferson (Chelsea Walls). They fight one battle and then regroup, this pattern repeats itself for a couple more times until the climax of the film-the epic confrontation where everything blows up, where the mystery is solved and where lots of blood is shed.
But rather than concentrating on an interesting storyline, New Line Cinema is banking more on the talents of film director del Toro to make stomachs churn, (1993’s Cronos was appealingly grotesque), and to create the ultimate hellish underworld of vampires, monsters and Rocky-Horror-Show-looking-humans. Among the film’s main selling points are the high tech fighting sequences and the cool special effects, but this can only make an action-film purist yearn for the physical acrobatics of a Bruce Lee film or make can only aggravate the anticipation for the next Matrix film. Apart from the film’s make-up department, who made some really great nasty-looking creatures, there is nothing to be impressed by, with an end result that look more like a Ghosts of Mars rather than another Matrix film.
