AKA: Blade 2 : Bloodhunt

Tag Line : Last time he fought against his sworn enemies...This time he will fight with them.

Blade (Wesley Snipes) is back! Picking up, sort-of, where the last film left off, we see our favourite Vampire hunter and his new sidekick, Scud (Norman Reedus), hunting down vampires in the former Soviet Union.

However it turns out that there is an even greater enemy afoot. A new race of bloodsuckers, known as Reapers, have emerged and are preying on the vampires. Realising that this new breed of super-vampire is ultimately a bigger threat to humanity, Blade finds himself reluctantly accepting a truce from the vampire council and fighting alongside a specialist elite group of vampire soldiers, known as the Bloodpack, to eradicate the Reaper menace.

All the ingredients that made the first film a blast are here, as more high power martial arts, sword duelling and high-tech gun battles quickly ensue as Blade and the Bloodpack attempt to wipe out the Reapers and destroy the leader, Jared Novak (played surprisingly by former 80's boy band member Luke [Bros] Goss), in a series of running battles.

Character actor Ron Pearlman turns up in the role of the Bloodpack leader and British comedy actor Danny John-Jules appears as one his henchmen. A strange mix of cast, but one that works suprisingly well .

Fans of the original will not be disappointed with this follow-up and will be undoubtedly pleased with the return of Blade's old partner Whistler (Kris Kristopherson) who makes a comeback by way of a few plot twists, as his character proved to be way too popular to be killed off (but what happened to that Nurse they picked up though?).

Overall Marks : 7/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate tag lines "Know the mark", "One man still has the edge", "One man is still the cutting edge".

• The films budget was $55million.

• Scud's remark "The Dark Knight Returns" was a reference to "Batman", another comic book superhero who hunts by night.

• Blade's line "Keep your friends close, your enemies closer" was a quote from the works of Sun Tzu, which follows a theme from several Wesley Snipes films, most notably "Rising Sun", "Art of War" and "Passenger 57".

• Director Guillermo del Torro also directed "Mimic".

• Michael Jackson was originally going to have a cameo role as a vampire pimp, but had to drop out due to a scheduling conflict. The part was filmed using a Czech actor instead, but the scene was eventually cut from the film altogether due to pacing reasons.

• The movie was filmed in Prague, in the Czech Republic.

• A small but interesting error, according to the first film "pure blood's" (those who are born vampires) don't scar. However, Nyssa claims she is a pure blood and yet has a scar above her top lip and (if you look closely) even has dental fillings.

Cast & Crew.

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