Jul 5 2010

Summer Flashback 1998: Blade Review

  Back in the 90’s we lived in blissful ignorance of the phenomenon that would come to dominate more than an entire decades summer blockbusters. The phenomenon known as the “comic book movie”. Apart from ‘The Crow’, and the inevitable implosion of the ‘Batman’ series, there weren’t really any films released in the 90’s that were based on funnybooks. Marvel was nearly bankrupt, DC were momentarily happy with their Batman cashcow, and the studios didn’t really know how to approach these adaptations. Until ‘Blade’.

 Blade (1998)

Written by: Droid

Ninja Rating:

There is an world that lays just beneath this one. It’s a vampire society, and has had an “understanding” with humans for hundreds of years. They live in the shadows, not causing too much noticeable trouble, and the humans look the other way. But an ambitious vampire named Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff) decides to challenge the societies rules, using vampire lore to resurrect the blood god La Magra to help him rule the humans. But the daywalker Blade (Wesley Snipes), and his buddy Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) stand in their way. Blade is a half-human, half-vampire, all badass vampire killing machine, employing garlic, silver, guns, knives, swords and good old fashioned fists to rid the world of vampires.

Wesley Snipes cuts an imposing figure as Blade. Usually playing a cocky, loud-mouthed character, Snipes is surprisingly well suited for the the strong, silent type, and he delivers his lines in a low growl that is almost painfully humourless. But, as a man who was infected by the vampire curse when his pregnant mother was bitten, and has grown up to deal with this curse, the character feels right. He is driven by his anger towards the vampires, both for himself and for his mother. When he rescues the haematologist Dr. Karen Jenson (N’Bushe Wright) after she is bitten by a vampire, it is not out of compassion for humanity, it is because of her resemblance to his mother, and the subconscious desire to re-write history.

 

Stephen Dorff is terrific as Blade’s arch enemy Deacon Frost. Full of arrogance and hatred, Frost doesn’t respect the powerful vampire council, and sets about employing himself as its new leader. Dorff brings an air of menace to the role, and is effectively outfitted in a distinctive cyber-punk chic (if such a style exists). Kristofferson is mainly resigned to delivering lengthy monologues explaining who everyone is, how things work and why they do what they do. Despite being encumbered with all the exposition, he handles it well and his gruff charisma masks the static nature of these scenes. Wright’s character is a staple of these kinds of films. The “normal” person who enters a fantastical world. She is the audience surrogate, what she learns, we learn and her role is essentially reduced to listening to the exposition, or as the ‘women in peril’. But Wright handles it professionally, albeit a bit blandly, and even though it’s a pretty cheap screenwriters tool (which can also be found in ‘Hellboy’, to name but one) it doesn’t mar the films effectiveness.

‘Blade’ is the second film from British director Stephen Norrington. After working on special effects for such films as ‘Aliens’ and ‘Split Second’, he made his first film, the ‘Alien’ rip off cheapie ‘Death Machine’ which went straight to video. Despite this, I happened upon it while perusing the weekly titles in my local video shop (those were the days), and was quite surprised that, despite it being totally unoriginal, it was pretty entertaining and featured a typically nutty performance from Brad Dourif. With a pretty large budget, a solid script from David S. Goyer and a good cast to work with, Norrington showed some real style and a wonderful ability to stage terrifically exciting action scenes where we can actually see what’s going on. It’s a real shame that he got pulled into the Don Murphy vortex of suck for his next film, ‘The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen’, because he seemed to be a talented director with a lot of potential.

 

Released in late August, ‘Blade’ was a breath of fresh air after a very ordinary summer that included the rival asteroid films ‘Armageddon’ and ‘Deep Impact’, the irritatingly awful ‘Godzilla’ and the tired, unnecessary ‘Lethal Weapon 4’. It was followed by two sequels (one good, one awful) and a shortlived tv series. Unfortunately (depending on how you look at it), it also helped convince Marvel to push for feature films for their more well-known characters, such as the ‘X-Men’ and ‘Spiderman’, and the result is now a glut of mostly mediocre comic book adaptations hitting the big screen every summer.

But the quality of ‘Blade’ can’t be overlooked. It holds up today as an entertaining action thriller, featuring inventive kills (I was grinning from ear to ear when I first saw the spontaneous combustion of the vampires during the wonderful opening scene), good performances, terrific direction, an interesting, fully realised world and Wesley Snipes kung-fu kicking vampires simply to annoy them (why else does he bother?). If you haven’t seen it for a while, or for some reason have never seen it before, I recommend you stick it on, put your feet up and enjoy yourself.

By Nathan • Film • 8 • Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,