BLADE
A movie review by Joe Barlow
(c) Copyright 1998
STARRING: Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff,
N'Bushe Wright
DIRECTOR: Stephen Norrington
WRITER: David S. Goyer
RATED/YEAR: R/1998
RATING: ** 1/2 (out of a possible *****)
I'd intended to start this review with a really lousy pun-- something along the lines of, "Being a vampire is a real pain in the neck." Fortunately, my good sense intervened and reminded me of two very important things: not only do many people despise puns, but, if I wasted a joke like that on this review, I would be expending far more creativity than any critical analysis of "Blade" deserves. Perhaps a more appropriate opening line would be, "Hey d00d, vampirez are kewl!!!"
Wesley Snipes *is* Blade, a sword-toting vampire hunter who spends much of his time sneering at people, then chopping them up. A half-vampire half-human hybrid, he has the speed, strength, and heightened senses of a nosferatu, but is able to walk around in broad daylight. He hangs around with Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), a remarkably grizzled inventor who creates the weapons that Blade uses to fight his foes. Whistler also periodically injects his friend with a special serum, designed to alleviate the cravings generated by Blade's non-human half. But after many years of these injections, Blade's body is beginning to build up a resistence. Soon he may start to experience the same bloodlust which afflicts the creatures he has vowed to destroy.
That sounds like an intriguing concept for an action movie, but screenwriter David Goyer (Dark City) and director Stephen Norrington (Death Machine) have little interest in building on it; instead, their emphasis is solely on the construction of one frantic fight sequence after another. I can hardly blame them. A good plot has never been a prerequisite for a financially-successful action movie; knowing this, Norrington and Goyer haven't wasted any time developing one. The result is a film that flings chunks of kinetic energy at the audience like watermelon fragments at a Gallagher show.
In all fairness, these scenes are well-done: their pacing is satisfactory, the photography is innovative, and the performances are sufficient. The physically buff Snipes is more than able to convey the strength and agility that his character supposedly possesses, even if Blade himself undergoes no emotional development whatsoever during the course of the film. But after seeing the movie's 200th vampire slaying, most of the novelty had worn off.
"Blade" tries to hide the fact that it's an incomprehensible mess via quick editing; it's a rare shot indeed that lasts for more than a couple of seconds, and the action sequences explode by with such rapidity that I actually found a few of them difficult to follow. In that regard, "Blade" echoes "Armageddon": it's spliced together as though it were a trailer, rather than the feature itself.
And yet...
Stephen Dorff is horribly miscast as Deacon Frost, an ambitious young vampire who dreams of conquering the world. Even if Blade weren't out to stop him, there's no way he'd get very far. First of all, the guy is a twig. It's hard to be intimidated by someone who looks like a strong gust of wind could knock him on his skinny little bottom, particularly when beefcake Blade is so physically intimidating. Deacon's most frightening trait: he can sneer just as effectively as Blade. During one scene, in which hero and villain have a lengthy chat, so many sneers were exchanged that I feared one of them would injure a facial muscle.
Deacon isn't the smartest guy in the world, either: his fiendish plan consists entirely of summoning a Vampire Blood God, or some equally silly nonesense. As he explains his evil plan to a hostage (looking for all the world like a whisper-thin, blond Snidley Whipflash as he does so), he boldy proclaims, "The vampire god will turn ALL humans into vampires! Everyone you know and love will become one of us!" Um, excuse me Deacon. You've just spent the first half of the movie talking about how humans are merely "cattle" (ie, vampire food). Let's think about this: if you turn all of us into vampires, what're YOU gonna eat? To the best of my knowledge, vampires can't just sit at home and pop a Lean Cuisine meal into the microwave. No humans = vampire crash diet, right? Maybe I'm crazy, but it seems like a pretty significant problem. (Did no one on the film's production crew catch this?)
And yet...
The movie flirts with sophistication in a couple of places, teasing us with plot twists that could've sparked the audience's interest: in addition to Blade's growing immunity to the serum, our heroine, Karen (N'Bushe Wright), may be turning into a vampire herself, and Whistler is being eaten alive by cancer. All three of these sub-plots deserved more time than the film gives them. None are resolved satisfactorally, and the one involving Karen is so ham-fisted that I actually laughed at its resolution. (She "borrows" an entire roomful of blood-processing equipment from the hospital in which she works, in order to create a cure for vampirism. Yeah, okay. I can see how the local hospital would loan her all their most expensive, state of the art blood-research gear. It's not like they ever use it, right? Remind me never to stay at that hospital.)
And yet...
And yet despite all that, "Blade" is kinda fun. The movie, which is based on the popular Marvel comic of the same name, succeeds in creating a comic-book world in which anything is possible. Bold, striking visuals leap from the screen. Shadows are used to great effect, while the camera spins dizzily, suggesting an off-balance world. Even the day scenes are drenched in darkness, a small cinematic touch that I loved.
The extreme violence of "Blade" will probably not bother too many viewers, either: it's so over-the-top that it stops being "real" and instead becomes an exercise in surrealism. This effectively enhances the movie's comic-book flavor. (Check out the scene in which a man's skeleton comes to life and claws its way out of his body, through the mouth.)
"Blade" is no masterpiece, but it does take great joy in sharing its vision of a realm in which nothing is as it seems. I actually enjoyed much of it, while simultaneously laughing at its many flaws.
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