Blade II

Cast View all

	Wesley Snipes	Blade
	Kris Kristofferson	Whistler
	Ron Perlman	Reinhardt
	Leonor Varela	Nyssa
	Norman Reedus	Scud
	Thomas Kretschmann	Damaskinos
	Luke Goss	Nomak
	Matt Schulze	Chupa
	Danny John-Jules	Asad
	Donnie Yen	Snowman
	Karel Roden	Kounen
	Marit Velle Kile	Verlaine
	Tony Curran	Priest
	Daz Crawford	Lighthammer
	Santiago Segura	Rush
	Samuel Le	Jigsaw
	Marek Vasut	Golem
	Pete Lee-Wilson	Blood Bank Doctor
	Paul Kasey	Blood Bank Guard
	Andrea Miltner	Blood Bank Nurse
	Ladislav Beran	Drug Dealer
	Jiří Maria Sieber	Blood Bank Guard
	Bridge Markland	Vampire with Exposed Spine
	Jamie Wilson	Reaper
	Stuart Luis	Reaper

Crew View all

Director	Guillermo del Toro
Writer	Marv Wolfman, Gene Colan, Ricardo Festiva
Producer	Avi Arad, Robert Bernacchi, Michael De Luca, Jon Divens, Toby Emmerich, Peter Frankfurt, Ricardo Festiva, Lynn Harris, Andrew J. Horne, Tomás Krejcí, Stan Lee, Patrick J. Palmer, Wesley Snipes
Musician	Marco Beltrami
Photography	Gabriel Beristain

Trailer

Edition details

Personal

Notes

Story Synopsis:
In a world where mediocre sequels are almost guaranteed to follow a box office hit, “Blade II” is a strong action-packed blend of horror, fantasy, and spectacular Donnie Yen-choreographed martial arts. A half-vampire, half-human hybrid, Blade (Snipes) chose the good half of his genetics, becoming a merciless vampire hunter with and an arsenal of deadly weapons. When he discovers that his former mentor Whistler (Kristofferson) is not dead, but has been infected with the vampire virus, Blade is further surprised with the fact that vampires want to make peace with him. A mutated super-vampire species is preying on both humans and vampires, and the bloodsuckers desperately need Blade’s help. The Blade character was created for Marvel Comics by Marv Wolfman and Gene Colan. (Suzanne Hodges)


DVD Picture:
The anamorphically enhanced 1.85:1 DVD exhibits images that are sharp and nicely detailed, with excellent depth and dimension throughout the mostly dark picture. For the fullest appreciation, view in a completely blackened room. Contrast and shadow delineation are quite satisfying. Colors are rich and vibrant, with bold bloody reds, and deep endless blacks. Edge enhancement can be quite bothersome when apparent, but , thankfully, is not always present. (Suzanne Hodges)


Soundtrack:
This DVD features a DTS-ES® (Discrete and Matrix 6.1) and a Dolby® Digital Surround EX™ soundtrack, both of which were the result of a new remix at MiCasa Studio, and feature very extensive back surround engagement. If you're in search of that certain soundtrack that really places you into a 360-degree listening space, you won't need to look much further than this one. The sonic spectacle of dynamic, poignant sound effects, liberally placed all around you will definitely provide for some fantastic entertainment. The music score is a wonderful recording, as is the rest of the soundtrack, and is very nicely dovetailed into the sound mix with exemplary spatiality on its own. The dialogue sounds remarkably natural with compelling spatial consistency. The sounds of gunshots, swordfights (such as in Chapter 5), and various metallic “hits” have quite a bit of content in the upper-end of the spectral range, so at or near reference level they'll definitely make their presence known with quite a bit of tonal sparkle. What seems to make one soundtrack stand out from so many others is the effective use of spatiality with sonic settings that are subtle, as well as those that are prominent in nature. And this soundtrack is one of them. You just get this constant sense of being enveloped, and being locked into a sonic world of expansiveness. A great example is the rain scene in Chapter 15. Of course, a major contributing factor to this soundtrack's wonderful soundfield rendering is the back surround channel, which comes into play with significantly enhancing the perception of dimension behind you. And the low-end? That speaks for itself. Bass extension, well below 25 Hz, is to be encountered from all channels! Because there are moments where all channels, including the aggressively engaged .1 LFE can become very active, there could be a tendency for your subwoofer to be challenged, especially if your system uses bass management. The Dolby Digital Surround EX soundtrack is excellent on its own. The DTS-ES version seemingly imparts an additional layer of low-end presence and dimensional coherence. This soundtrack simply gives you intense entertainment, remarkable creativity, and great home theatre show-off material-all in one. An isolated Dolby Digital score is also included. (Perry Sun)

This Disc Contains The Following WSR-Rated Superb Qualities:
Reference Quality
Superb Sound Effects Recording Quality
Superb Music Score Recording Quality
Superb Special Visual Effects Quality



MOVIE REVIEW
BY ROGER EBERT

"Blade II" is a really rather brilliant vomitorium of viscera, a comic book with dreams of becoming a textbook for mad surgeons. There are shots here of the insides of vampires that make your average autopsy look like a slow afternoon at Supercuts. The movie has been directed by Guillermo del Toro, whose work is dominated by two obsessions: War between implacable ancient enemies, and sickening things that bite you and aren't even designed to let go.

The movie is an improvement on "Blade" (1998), which was pretty good. Once again it stars Wesley Snipes as the Marvel Comics hero who is half-man, half-vampire. He was raised from childhood by Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), a vampire hunter who kept Blade's vampirism in check, and trained him to fight the Nosferatus. Time has passed, Whistler has been captured by vampires and floats unconscious in a storage tank while his blood is harvested, and Blade prowls the streets in his lonely war.

One night acrobatic creatures with glowing red eyes invade Blade's space and engage in a violent battle that turns out to be entirely gratuitous, because after they remove their masks to reveal themselves as vampires--a ferocious warrior and a foxy babe--they only want to deliver a message: "You have been our worst enemy. But now there is something else on the streets worse than you!" This reminded me of the night in O'Rourke's when McHugh asked this guy why he carried a gun and the guy said he lived in a dangerous neighborhood and McHugh said it would be safer if he moved.

The Vampire Nation is under attack by a new breed of vampires named Reapers, who drink the blood of both humans and vampires, and are insatiable. Blade, who is both human and vampire, is like a balanced meal. If the Reapers are not destroyed, both races will die. This news is conveyed by a vampire leader whose brain can be dimly seen through a light blue translucent plastic shell, more evidence of the design influence of the original iMac.

Blade and Whistler (now rescued from the tank and revived with a "retro-virus injection") join the vampires in this war, which is not without risk, because of course if the Reapers are destroyed, the vampires will turn on them. There is a story line, however quickly sketched, to support the passages of pure action, including computer-aided fight scenes of astonishing pacing and agility. Snipes once again plays Blade not as a confident superhero, but as a once-confused kid who has been raised to be good at his work and uncertain about his identity. He is attracted to the vampire Nyssa (Leonor Varela), but we sense a relationship between a creature of the night and Blade, known as the Daywalker, is sooner or later going to result in arguments over their work schedules.

The Reapers are the masterpieces of this movie. They all have what looks like a scar down the center of their chins. The first time we see one, it belongs to a donor who has turned up at a blood bank in Prague. This is not the kind of blood bank you want to get your next transfusion from. It has a bug zapper hanging from the wall, and an old drunk who says you can even bring in cups of blood from outside and they'll buy them.

The chin scar, it turns out, is not a scar but a cleft. These Reapers are nasty. They have mouths that unfold into tripartite jaws. Remember the claws on the steam shovels in those prize games at the carnival, where you manipulated the wheels and tried to pick up valuable prizes? Now put them on a vampire and make them big and bloody, with fangs and mucus and viscous black saliva. And then imagine a tongue coiled inside with an eating and sucking mechanism on the end of it that looks like the organ evolution forgot--the sort of thing diseased livers have nightmares about. Later they slice open a Reaper's chest cavity and Blade and Whistler look inside.

Blade: The heart is surrounded in bone!

Whistler: Good luck getting a stake through it!

Del Toro's early film "Cronos" (1993) was about an ancient golden beetle that sank its claws into the flesh of its victims and injected an immortality serum. His "Mimic" (1997) was about a designer insect, half-mantis, half-termite, that escapes into the subway system and mutates into a very big bug. Characters would stick their hands into dark places and I would slide down in my seat. His "Devil's Backbone" (2001), set in an orphanage at the time of the Spanish Civil War, is a ghost story, not a horror picture, but does have a body floating in a tank.

Still in his 30s, the Mexican-born director doesn't depend on computers to get him through a movie and impress the kids with fancy fight scenes. He brings his creepy phobias along with him. You can sense the difference between a movie that's a technical exercise ("Resident Evil") and one steamed in the dread cauldrons of the filmmaker's imagination.

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