Blade

B- Directed by Stephen Norrington Running Time: 2:00

This was a pretty cool movie. Wesley Snipes is Blade, a half mortal, half vampire. His mother was bitten when she was pregnant with him, and when he was born, he inhereted all the vampire powers (strength, regeneration) and none of their weaknesses (sunlight, silver, garlic). But he is human in that his life goes at the same rate as all of us. Vampires tend to live a lot longer. His life is spent killing vampires, and searching for the one that infected his mother. The movie starts with a nasty birth scene, and quickly turns into a bloodbath. Literally. There's a very cool fight scene, and then the rest of the movie is spent following Blade. The major plot (killing vampires) is good, but the inner plot wasn't well developed. Stephen Dorff plays a vampire leader. He isn't a pureblood (meaning he wasn't born a vampire, he became one), and he wants vampires to take over the world. So he translates the ancient vampire Bible, and learns of a way to summon the blood god. Great, but what does that mean?

The whole blood god thing isn't explained. Why is that such agood thing? And when the blood god arrives, he isn't all that much better than any other vampire when it comes right down to it. So that was disappointing. Otherwise, I liked the movie. I enjoy these gothic/action-adventure/vampire/thriller type films. They always have a good soundtrack, and pretty good fight scenes. And these days, the special effects are pretty good too. Blade is no different. Some of the special effects are cool and revolting at the same time. But they get the point across. And Wesley Snipes does a great job playing Blade. Now I haven't read the comic books the movie is based on, so I don't know how faithful the movie is, but he was very cool, and very menacing. And what I really liked was that he didn't display a lot of emotion. Sometimes in these movies, the bad-ass good guy has a heart that comes out way too often. Here, Blade has a heart, but it comes out very, very rarely, and then only for a few seconds. The rest of the cast was adequate, nothing really special about them. The scenery was good looking, and the direction wasn't bad for someone I've never heard of. Lots of MTV-style quick editing and shaky camera movements, that worked well during the fight scenes.

What I did like about the story, was how they made vampires seem more human than creature. They discussed how to kill vampires in a way that made it seem like you could actually kill them, and not just like they were invincible. And who would have thought that something that became famous during the O.J. trial, would have played such a big part of the climax? (You'll have to see it to understand what I'm talking about, and if you still don't get it, write me and I'll tell you about it.)

Overall, Blade isn't for everyone. The blood effects can get brutal sometimes, and if you don't like the whole vampire thing, you may not like this. But I enjoyed it, and I think it's worth seeing on a big screen.