Film Review - Blade

Blade (named after the comic book of the same name) is Batman vs. the Vampires in the middle of a Kung Fu movie. It's a lot of fun except for the shaky ending.

So Blade is this guy whose parents are dead. We don't know what happened to Dad, but we know Mom died in childbirth. He travels around the world hunting down vampires. He has super-human strength. Toys? Oh yeah, he has toys designed to kill vampires.

Blade is a half-breed: half human, half vampire. This means he can exist in sunlight, but has all of the vampire strengths and the hunger for blood. Blade is fighting this hunger with a vaccine he is taking. He is driven by an intense hatred of vampires, a result of his mother being bitten by one before giving birth. That's about as much as the character development goes. What's left is action.

As I said, Blade is another Batman. He runs through the city killing off vampires. (Really cool effect when one dies: it literally falls into a million pieces.) He saves a victim, hoping to cure her of the vampire disease, and hoping to use her to get to the chief vampires. The chief vampires are hoping to get to Blade to use his blood in a ceremony that will bring forth a blood god, which will convert the rest of the world into vampires.

There's lots of fighting and killing. Real comic book stuff. It's the ending that sucks. The ending, in fact, was reshot. The first attempt with the blood god didn't work at all. A reshoot, which keeps the fight at a more personal level, works better (I've seen both endings), but still is weak and only sets up a possible sequel. Given the genre of Blade I can't knock this film with the exception of the poor ending.

Jammed Pipe!

Film Facts

Directed by Stephen Norrington

Released in 1998

MPAA Rating: R

Reviewed by Mongo