Blade II
The Daywalker returns in the second instalment in the saga of of Blade, the half-human, half vampire dark hero from Marvel Comics
Set a few years after the first movie, Blade has learned that his old buddy Whistler didn’t destroy himself as thought and has tracked him down to....
The Daywalker returns in the second instalment in the saga of of Blade, the half-human, half vampire dark hero from Marvel Comics.
Set a few years after the first movie, Blade has learned that his old buddy Whistler didn’t destroy himself as thought and has tracked him down to Prague in order to finish the job. Finding him in a kind of stasis and not yet turned, he gives him the cure and along with his new buddy Scud, they get back to the business of hunting vampires.
A new kind of vampire called Reapers have appeared, immune to garlic and silver, they're spreading like wildfire and they hate vampires.
However with the rise of the Reapers, the powerful vampire nation, now their prey, needs his help and so Blade & co. team up with the Bloodpack, a vampire group already set up and in training for two years with the sole purpose of bringing Blade down. Together, under a shaky truce, they set out to rid the world of this new threat and in the process discover something far more disturbing…
Review
Wesley Snipes returns in great style as Blade, the Daywalker in this excellent sequal. It's not quite as powerful as the original and the start is certainly less of a rush, although that was the intention of the director. However as sequals go it is pretty good and well worth the popcorn.
There's plenty of action and the effects are pretty good all round although some of the CG bits in a few of the fight scenes look a bit naff. As well as Blade's signature weapons, the sword, spike gun and glaive, there's a whole new range introduced such as gun blades, EDTA injectors, UV rifles and light grenades.
The Reapers are a great horror idea and they are presented very well with Luke Goss, remember Bros, giving a good account as their leader, Jared Nomak. Ron Perlman plays the kind of character he mostly does - big guy, pretty nasty and he not your friend! You might even recognise Danny John Jules, who played the cat in Red Dwarf, and Donnie Yen , an absolute star in the asian martial art movie world, as members of the Bloodpack. Donnie is also credited as fight choreographer and does a great job but his talents were underused in front of the camera. Kristofferson didn't add much to the movie and frankly they could have left him out but I suppose it was one way to get Blade to the Czech Republic and he needed someone on his side. Leonor Varela as Damaskinos' daughter, adds the romance (or is it necrophilia) angle, which lets them do some softer scenes.
The sets are great and Prague makes an excellent location for this genre of film.
Audio/Video
Presented in 2.35:1 Anamorphic widescreen format, the picture is sharp and clear. Obviously they've taken into consideration the genre of the movie so there's no problem with dark shots - "Aaaargh! the light, the light - it burns!"
Sound options are English Dolby Digital EX 5.1 and DTS ES 6.1 and as you'ld expect it's excellent, especially with the good range of music tracks used.
Extras
It’s a two-discer so there are plenty of extras. Disc 1 has most of the audio extras…
Two Feature Commentaries - One by director Giullermo Del Toro and producer Peter Frankfurt and the other by writer David Goyer and Wesley Snipes. Both are pretty good and there’s a definite rapport in both pairings. Del Toro is pretty mad so the first is much more entertaining.
Isolated Score - where you get to watch the movie with no dialogue, just the music.
Disc 2 is all extras and is organised into three main sections. Here’s the breakdown…
Production Workshop
- The Blood Pact - at over 80 minutes long this is a pretty good, feature length documentary on the making of Blade II. It has its own scene index and subtitles and there's also an extra 16 minutes of additional material accessible by pressing Enter when you see a vampire glyph in lower left of the screen.
- Sequence Breakdowns - In depth information on six key scenes. You can view the original script, the shooting script, story boards, FX breakdowns and the final scene.
- Visual Effects
- Synthetic Stuntmen - a short six minute piece on how they used CG for several of the stunts.
- The Digital Maw - a three and a half minute piece on digital artwork and how they made the Reaper's jaw.
- Progress Reports - These are the periodic progress reports sent into the director, on video, from the effects workshop and covers much of the work done on model creation, prosthetics, animatronics, etc. Lasts about 50 minutes and is pretty interesting.
- Notebooks - galleries of pages from the notebooks used in the production from from the director and script supervisor and script pages for three unfilmed scenes.
- Art Gallery - pictures of sequence concepts, props, weapons, costume design, set design, character design and story boards.
Deleted and Alternate Scenes
This is a 25 minutes sequence of deleted or alternate scenes, which can be viewed with or without commentary by Del Toro and Frankfurt. There are 16 scenes, which are indexed, and as I said before, Del Toro's commentary is well worth checking out.
Promotional Material
- Trailers - a teaser and theatrical trailer.
- Blade II Video Game Survival Guide, a short video preview of the console game of the movie. It looks not bad but without hands on it’s difficult to tell.
- Theatrical Press Kit - This is derived from the original press kit sent out to promote the movie and comprises mainly cast, production and filmmaker information and bios.
- Music Video: Cypress Hill and Roni Size "Child of the Wild West" - A three and half minute rap track that appeared somewhere in the movie. Certainly not the best track from the film.
Overall
An excellent action/horror movie and if you've seen the first one then you won't want to miss this one. The DVD is very high quality and with the added volume of extras you'ld be well justified in adding this title to your collection.
Here's a link to the official movie site for information, pictures, trailers, downloads, etc. - http://www.blade2.com/
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