A Movie That Broke New Ground - A Classic

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2016)

If you like your science-fiction action packed, or your action movie to have a brain, then this Blade is for you.The first is still the best in franchise.Between Snipes' potent machismo and Norrington's stylistic eye, Blade pulsates with pounding vitality.An intensely thrilling comic- book story.Lots of pumping blood and superhuman feats power this Wesley Snipes- as- half- vampire flick above the norm.A hugely entertaining supporting cast. This film was a very welcome surprise.Glittering and gruesome, slickly assembled and strangely serious for the genre.Blade has style and substance. The setting of "Blade" is ingeniously evoked, at once wildly unreal and entirely believable.The heroin chic, nihilist couture and Sybaritic abandon of New York night life are all marshaled to create a portrait of a lumpen class of hip parasites who are constantly on the prowl for their next sanguinary fix.With his pasty, punkish look and slouchy sexuality, Dorff is a vampire for the millennium -- Bram Stoker by way of Robert Mapplethorpe.
With the help of Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) -- who makes Blade's massive, silver-stake- throwing guns and hollow-point bullets filled with garlic -- and a pretty hematologist (N'Bushe Wright), Blade seeks out Frost for the ultimate battle.
Norrington, whose background is in makeup special effects, preserves comic-book reality with sped-up action, camera zooms and flash edits.Wesley Snipes has found a role worthy of his suave physical powers, and Stephen Dorff, so good in "Backbeat" and "I Shot Andy Warhol," once again brings superb focus and conviction to his role. Mark Isham's techno- inspired music score echoes and elaborates "Blade's" creepy, druggy, sexy vibe.