Review: BLADE

VAMPIRES SUCK

(reviewed on ppv)

    There’s a great scene in "Blade"- the action-packed vampire gore fest starring falling star Wesley Snipes- where a twenty-somethings guy is riding in a fast car with a hot date and she purs to him about showing him a “surprise”. The “surprise” turns out to be a hidden underground techno dance club in the back of a meat locker with loud music and flashing lights. The guy is lost in the crowd and stops as a red liquid drips onto his hand. He looks up. All of a sudden the emergency fire sprinklers turn on full blast. The catch? It’s not water, it’s blood. The blood pours over everyone who all cheer and shout and bask in the thick, red substance. The guy looks around and everyone has fangs and fierce eyes. They’re growling at him. They’re…VAMPIRES! He crawls on the blood soaked floor as the music pounds and the blood flows over everything (even the camera lens in one badly edited scene…you’re not supposed to know the camera is there, are you?) until the twenty somethings guy stops at the boots of a black man all in black. You know he’s the hero because he doesn’t have ONE single drop of blood on him.
    Then the movie gets bad.
    “Blade” is the kind of movie that would be a great comic book, that’s probably why the film is based on a Marvel comic book. In my humble opinion they shouldn’t have put it on the big screen. It’s more or less a brutally violent kids film. It’s silly, it’s ridiculous, and the special effects look like they were drawn by comic book artists.
    The plot (if I can call it that) deals with Wesley “Falling Star” Snipes as he hunts and kills vampires. The extremely thin backstory has him being a half vampire, half man/ killing machine. His mom was attacked by a vamp prior to his birth. Snipes has an old man sidekick whose family was wiped out by the creatures, and his name is basic action one-namer Whistler. Then there’s a girl, a villain, and an idiotic ending. And get this: before Snipes kills the bad vamp he delivers this oh-so creative one-liner, “Mother fuckers always tryin’ to ice skate uphill.” Are you kidding me? I think “Have a nice day!” is better.
    There is some decent action in the wannabe dark and brooding film, most noticeable in the halfway good train sequence. The rest of the film is like every superhero film combined with vampires. Blade has a motorcycle, he has all kinds of weapons, and he wants revenge on the bad guy not just because he’s bad but because of something personal.
    To put the whip cream on the pumpkin pie, Snipes executive-produced this mess. Falling star? After U.S. Marshalls, Down in the Delta, and this…he’s fallen and he can’t get up. ** (out of ****)