UNCLE DON’S VIEWS OF NIL REPUTE
You can call me Dracula, or you can call me Nosferatu, or you can call
me Vlad, but in this week’s vampire flick you’d better call me “Blade.”
In fact, that’s Mr. Blade to you, you weak helpless humans. I’m here to
save your butts and drag out a 10-minute idea into a nearly two-hour
flick.
Wesley Snipes is back in this poor man’s version of Jackie Chan meets
“The Matrix” meets “Salem’s Lot” meets “Alien” meets “Ghostbusters,”
where semi-bad guys help bad guys take down badder guys who are led by
the baddest guy. Look, that ain’t good English, but “Blade II” isn’t a
very good movie.
It’s a bloody sucker though. There’s enough exsanguination going on to
fill multiple Olympic-sized pools as vampires hunt each other down in
their varying quests to control the world.
But hey, “Blade II” is more than just another exercise in nonsensical
violence. We’ve got enough plots and subplots and sub-subplots to keep
any Area 51, Sasquatch-spotting, Art Bell-listening conspiracy buffs tied
up in knots trying to figure out who’s doing what to whom.
The basic idea is pretty simple. The government or some equally
nefarious and shadowy organization hires a half-vampire (Snipes) to kill
other vampires. Snipes takes command of a Dirty Half-Dozen of vampire
killers that has your usual quorum of the scarred, scared and stupid,
dressed all by the clothier from “Mad Max.”
Vampires, even in this day and age, are still susceptible to the same
old garden variety ills. Silver and light seem to be the preferred
slaughter du jour in “Blade II.” I didn’t see anyone floundering around
with garlic and wooden stakes.
Snipes and his compadres arm themselves with enough silver to open a
mint and disappear into the tombs and catacombs of Prague loaded for bear
and headed for trouble.
Turns out the bad vampires don’t want to croak and, lo and behold,
with apparently the government’s assistance, are developing a super
vampire who is immune to light, silver and garlic but has the desire to
act in really stupid movies. Sho nuff, they’ve created one of these
suckers (pun, get it, ha-ha), and looky here, Super Vamp is now feeding
on the regular vampires, spreading some sort of disease around the
neighborhood and generally making a pest of himself.
Snipes, in one of the sub-subplots, before he can nail down Super
Vamp, must find and rescue his old master (Kris Kristofferson, still
alive and “acting” it seems) from some other vampires. Find him Snipes
does, hauling this wide-load back to a safe house where we can listen to
him complain and bellyache about being held captive by vampires for a few
years.
Why Kristofferson is a “master” and what he is master of is either not
made very clear or I slept through that part. Meanwhile, we’ve got the
rest of the movie to listen to this coot pontificate annoyingly like Judd
Hirsch in “Independence Day.”
But you know, once you’ve seen one blood-sucking vampire skulking in
the shadows, you’ve seen them all. Most of them are as scary as the
flying monkeys in “The Wizard of Oz,” (yeah, yeah, they freaked me out
till I was about 30), have more tattoos that a fleet of sailors, wear
more leather than a herd of cows, and are generally more persistent than
used car salesmen.
When killed, they just don’t rot away like in the old days. Nope, they
explode like M-80s, flame like sparklers and litter the general vicinity
with miscellaneous body parts. Disneyland should definitely fit these
guys into their nightly fireworks show.
Meanwhile, Snipes, gloomier than a winter’s day in Maine, affects
hardly a scratch, a bruise, a bead of sweat while fighting off more
vampires than cockroaches in a tenement.
Ultimately, “Blade II” is just an old-fashioned love story, as Snipes
falls for the daughter of the head vampire. She’s kind, sweet, moral, not
as disfigured as her brethren and as this flick drags itself to a close,
wants to die a vampire. Snipes takes her into the sunlight, where she
crumbles away like an Enron document.
How nice, how cute, how trite. How dumb.
“Blade II” is rated for strong pervasive violence, language, some drug
use and sexual content.
* UNCLE DON reviews b-movies and cheesy musical acts for the Daily
Pilot. He may be reached by e-mail at ReallyBadWriting@aol.com
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