Blade

Blade (1998)

When Blade was just a tiny little baby inside his mothers womb his mommy was bitten by an evil nasty vampire. This had unforeseen consequences as baby Blade, when he was born, possessed all the powers of vampires with none of the weaknesses, except for their bloodlust. He was found by Abraham Whistler, a grizzled old man who had been hunting vampires down for years, killing them to avenge his family who was murdered by a vampire. Whistler took pity on the young Blade and took the kid under his wing, helping Blade to control his bloodlust and teaching him to kill vampires. This movie picks up years later with Blade in his prime, slaughtering vamps left and right and sometimes saving their victims. The movie opens with Blade breaking up a vampire rave in the back of a big slaughterhouse. Blade has no trouble taking on the teaming hoards of bloodsuckers and kills several before stapling one to the wall with some silver spikes, questioning him a bit and then setting him on fire before slipping out as the police and firefighters show up. The firefighters put the flaming vampire out and he is taken to a hospital morgue where he wakes up and starts biting people. Blade shows up just not in time and drives off the vampire after it's bitten Dr. Karen Jensen. When Blade leaves the hospital he brings Dr. Jensen along with him back to Whistlers hideout. Her situation is explained to her and they let her know that in a few days she'll be turned into a vampire herself. She doesn't give up so easily however and starts working on a way to keep the change from happening. In the meantime the innovative renegade vampire Ethan Frost is working on a major plan that is likely to upset the balance of the Vampire Nation and make things much worse for the puny humans. Will Blade be able to find Frost and stop his evil plans? Will Dr. Jensen find a cure of herself or join the fanged ranks of the vampires? Will Blade find out even more about his origins as he digs deeper in his search for Frost? Probably, but you'll have to watch the movie to find out for sure.

Blade has a lot of good things going for it. High production costs and nifty sets for one thing. It also has some fairly good actors in it who give some nice performances. The action scenes are great and the fighting choreography is some of the best you'll see. Blade himself doesn't have much of a personality, but he replaces it with attitude. This did pose a slight problem as I found myself rooting for the bad guys most of the time since they actually do have personalities and I found them personally to be more likable. I don't think this is entirely Wesley Snipes fault, I think it's just how they wanted to portray the character in this movie. I also had trouble getting a handle on what exactly it takes to kill a vampire in the Blade Universe. Sometimes they seem to die whenever a silver item nicks them and other times they can have pieces of silver shoved through their bodies or big chunks cut off with a silver blade and nothing much happens. Other than that there are some good special effects, lots of CGI exploding vampires and some good makeup jobs.

I like this movie. Not a huge fan of Blade himself, but the movie has a lot more to offer than just the one character. If you're a fan of vampire movies you got to give it a try. If not, well, it's probably worth watching anyway.

3 out of 4

reviewed by Scott Schwarzwalder