director
Stephen Norrington
screenwriter
David S. Goyer
based
on characters created by
Marv Wolfman
Gene Colan
producers
Robert Engelman
Peter Frankfurt
Wesley Snipes
cinematographer
Theo van de Sande
music
Mark Isham
editor
Paul Rubell
cast
Wesley Snipes (Blade)
Stephen Dorff (Deacon Frost)
Kris Kristofferson (Whistler)
N'Bushe Wright (Dr. Karen Jenson)
Donal Logue (Quinn)
Udo Kier (Dragonetti)
Traci Lords (Racquel)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 120m
u.s.
release: 8/21/98
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
see also:
- blade
II
- blade: trinity
|
The
depressing thing about a glut of bad movies -- this whole summer's
offerings, pretty much -- is that they lower your expectations
and also your standards. Blade, the latest MTV-PlayStation
software, isn't anything great -- some of it isn't any good at
all -- but compared to tripe like Godzilla
and last week's The Avengers,
it looks like a Fritz Lang film. The movie is fast and painless
and sometimes agreeably cheesy, with a string of solid supporting
performances. Coming at the end of this particular summer, it's
neither a highlight nor a lowlight; it's a mediumlight, I suppose.
I wasn't bored, but I wasn't excited either.
Blade, the half-vampire "daywalker" whose mission in
life is to dispatch as many bloodsuckers as possible, began life
in the '70s as a popular character in the Marvel comic book Tomb
of Dracula. Blade's mother, you see, was bitten by a vamp
while pregnant with Blade; vampirism ran in his veins, so his
obsession carried a personal twist beyond the standard you-killed-my-mother-prepare-to-die
vendetta. As comic-book heroes go, Blade (at least in his '70s
incarnation -- I'm not familiar with the more recent Marvel comics)
was tough and driven but also witty. His creator, Marv Wolfman,
always made sure to write sharp dialogue for him, and Wolfman
even gave Blade the unlikely partner Hannibal King, a turncoat
vampire (who predated Hannibal Lecter, in case you wondered).
Good ol' Hannibal is missing from the movie Blade, and
so is 99 percent of Blade's personality. As played by Wesley
Snipes (also one of the producers), he's a big hunk of wood with
a stylish haircut and an arsenal that puts Rambo's to shame.
Blade is such a stoic bad-ass that you keep wanting to laugh,
but Snipes -- who is not a humorless man, as his performances
elsewhere certify -- never quite lets you. He takes Blade and
this movie far too seriously, never riding with the absurdity
of it or showing the redeeming charisma of, say, Chow Yun-Fat.
In his review, Roger Ebert ranked Blade among New Line's
other recent genre pictures Dark City
and Spawn. I would, too -- they're
all grim-faced, pompous comic-book movies for people who think
narrative begins and ends with Todd McFarlane.
Director Stephen Norrington seems to know there's nothing going
on with Snipes, because he surrounds the star with colorful actors,
such as Stephen Dorff as the nasty, ambitious vampire Deacon
Frost (since he and Snipes have both played drag queens, think
of their final conflict as the Battle of the Divas), N'Bushe
Wright as a hematologist whose blood research comes in mighty
handy, Kris Kristofferson as Blade's grizzled old mentor and
weapons specialist, and the great Udo Kier as a genetically "pure"
vampire. Kier, who once played the big-cheese vampire in the
cult classic Blood for Dracula, gives his scenes a dash
of welcome Teutonic flavor; too bad he doesn't have much else
to do.
Neither does Blade, really. Oh, he's active as all get-out --
every reel or so, he shows up at some vamp hang-out, unsheathes
his sword, and gives the director another excuse for pounding
techno music and Cuisinart editing. But compared to the Blade
of the comics, this hero is dumb bordering on suicidal; he never
seems to have a strategy aside from crashing vampire parties.
The old Blade relied more on smarts than on brute strength and
superior firepower. That's what's missing from Blade,
and what makes it a reasonably diverting video-game of a movie
but not successful entertainment. |