Blade (1998)
Directed by Stephen Norrington
The Daywalker known as "Blade" - a half-vampire, half-mortal man - becomes the protector of humanity against an underground army of vampires.
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16 films that influenced Blade
What critics say influenced Blade
Norrington and Goyer don’t really explain the power struggle in the vampire world between the governing body of full-blooded vampires (headed by that undead icon of Eurotrash cinema, Udo Kier, whose credits include Paul Morrisey’s “Blood for Dracula”) and the ones, like Frost, who’ve been turned.
Ever since the silent days of movies, when F.W. Murnau chilled audiences with Nosferatu, a creepy, atmospheric adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, film-goers have been entranced by vampires on the big screen.
Apart from that, the latest effort from director Randa Haines (Children of a Lesser God) is quite harmless.
Blade’s dilemma has none of the tragic resonance Joss Whedon has given his heroine in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.”
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Those of you who care to see Snipes giving a damn -- rather than kicking, spinning, and posing for two hours -- would be well-advised to rent a 1992 movie called "The Waterdance."
The incredibly attractive pair have quite the chemistry, overcoming some rather inane dialogue -- and the fact that heavy nods are given to Strictly Ballroom, Dirty Dancing, even Singing in the Rain -- with ease.
When the vampires are killed, they instantly disentigrate, and sometimes when killed differently, even inflate and blow up (a tactic blatantly stolen from John Carpenter's "Big Trouble in Little China").
You'd be better off renting an INTELLIGENT subgenre action flick like "The Crow," than to subject yourself to a movie so full of gratuitous exploitation of gore and GQ Goth.
The only examples of it I can pinpoint are Dark City and The Crow, which, coincidentally, were both directed by Alex Proyas, a man of great visual style.
Blade is the latest in a series of films based on adult-oriented comics called "graphic novels" (Spawn and The Crow are two other recent examples).
"Superman" is dated and uneven, "Batman" is more about style than substance, "The Crow" is strangely unexciting, "The Phantom" is a lot of fun but a bit childish and "Spawn" is busier with FX than anything else.
The shadowy, abstract urban environment of "Blade" is strictly "Batman" revisited, with hints of leather and steel fetishism on loan from "The Crow.
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Unlike the absurd pseudo-Gothic of "Interview with the Vampire" or Abel Ferrara's slightly more inventive "The Addiction," the setting of "Blade" is ingeniously evoked, at once wildly unreal and entirely believable.
The incredibly attractive pair have quite the chemistry, overcoming some rather inane dialogue -- and the fact that heavy nods are given to Strictly Ballroom, Dirty Dancing, even Singing in the Rain -- with ease.