BLADE
USA. 1998. Director - Stephen Norrington, Screenplay - David S. Goyer, Based on the Comic Book Created by Gene Colan & Marv Wolfman, Producers - Robert Engleman, Peter Frankfurt & Wesley Snipes, Photography - Theo Van Der Sande, Music - Mark Isham, Music Supervisor - Dana Sano, Visual Effects Supervisor - Chuck Comisky, Digital Visual & Miniature Effects - Blue Sky/VIFX (Supervisor - Richard Hollander), Visual Effects - Digiscope, 525 Post Productions and the Production Plant Inc, Flat Earth Productions (Supervisor - Kevin O'Neill), Image Savant (Supervisor - Richard `Dr' Brady), Post Logic & Wildcat Digital Effects, Special Effects Supervisor - Vincent Montefusco, Makeup Effects - Greg Cannom Creations, Additional Makeup Effects - Image Animation (Supervisor - Gary J. Tunnicliffe), Production Design - Kirk M. Petruccelli. Production Company - Imaginary Forces/Amen Ra Films/New Line Cinema. Wesley Snipes (Blade), Stephen Dorff (Deacon Foster), N'Bushe Wright (Dr Karen Jenson), Kris Kristofferson (Abraham Whistler), Donal Logue (Quinn), Udo Kier (Dragonetti), Kevin Patrick Wells (Officer Krieger), Arly Jover (Mercury), Tim Guinee (Dr Curtis Webb), Sanaa Lathan (Vanessa Brooks)
Plot: In 1967 Vanessa Brooks is brought into a hospital, having been fatally bitten by a vampire, and at the same time goes into labour. She gives birth to a baby son before expiring. In the present day the child is now Blade, who, as a result of the bite, is half-vampire and half-human and can walk in the daylight but also has supernatural strength. Armed with titanium stakes and garlic and silver-filled shotgun shells, Blade conducts a single-handed campaign to slaughter all vampires in revenge for the murder of his mother. Blade finds a dangerous, new enemy in Deacon Frost, a radical vampire who poses a threat to the traditional vampires who own and control most of the city. Deacon wants to use the ancient vampire Bible to raise La Magra, the blood god, something that requires the spilling of Blade's half-human blood
Stephen Norrinton made a striking directorial debut with 1995's 'Death Machine', an effort that transcended its low-budget with a striking ferocity and energy and marked former effects man Norrington as one of the most promising of up and coming genre directors. 'Blade' is Norrington's second film and his debut in the American A-budget mainstream.
Although 'Blade' is not as intensive an all-out ride as 'Death Machine' was, Norrington succeeds in fulfilling his promise, injecting a considerable amount of stylistic elan into the film - notably a breathlessly intensive sequence with Snipes and vampires chasing one another through a subway tunnel alongside speeding trains and a climax with Snipes facing Dorff in sword combat with Snipes decapitating Dorff's torso and he simply regenerating it.
It is an adaption of the 1970s Marvel comic. The adaption comes from David S. Goyer who has been responsible for such darkly driven works as 'Dark City' (1998) and 'The Crow: City of Angels' (1996). Goyer conducts some quite unique twists on vampire legend. If 'The Lost Boys', 'Near Dark' et al represent the transformation of the vampire into a kind of badass thug relishing the freedom of the modern world, then 'Blade' takes it to a logical extreme wherein the vampires are a kind of criminal underworld preying on humanity, secretly controlling the city and running vampire nightclubs which spray blood through the walls, treating would-be converts as a slave underclass even marking them as their own property. Indeed the film could almost read as an action film wherein Snipes might be a cop taking on a group of drug underlords with a considerable outlay of artillery fire. The plot though becomes considerably more cliche-driven in the latter quarter when Goyer has Dorff conducting cliched Lovecraftian rites to raise elder gods.
The film has been criticized as being a comic-book but the critics doing so seem to entirely elude the point that is exactly what it is meant to be. Here Norrington and Goyer do quite a decent job at capturing the dark nihilistic mood that drives modern screen comic-book adaptions. The film never quite resonates with the scintillatingly dark psychology of either of the first two 'Batman' films or 'The Crow', but then neither does it have the two-dimensional lack of depth of the 'Spawn' film or either of Joel Schumacher's 'Batman' abominations.
In an interesting move star Wesley Snipes also produces the film. One finds it hard though to understand Snipes' appeal as an actor. The man keeps coming across as rather thick every time he appears on screen. Whenever he does well in a part - in the likes of 'Jungle Fever' (1990) and 'Rising Sun' (1993) - it is because there is a good script on his side. Norrington seems to realize the limitations of Snipes' talents and works with it, giving him minimalistic dialogue and shooting everything he does as a stylized pose. He gives, for example, Snipes a fabulous entrance - slowly panning up from his boots to show him impressively decked out in shades, gleaming trenchcoat and black body armour. Indeed whenever Snipes removes his sunglasses and talks the character seems to lose much of its darkly driven mystique - the effectiveness of the character is a triumph of style over acting talent. On the other hand Stephen Dorff, although he does adequately, seems miscast as Deacon - the part requires someone into their thirties at least and Dorff comes across as far too youthful. Kristofferson is okay and N'Bushe Wright makes a promising debut.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1998
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