Anaemic

Rating: 5/10 (11 January 2005)

Half man, half vampire Blade (aka Wesley Snipes) is out to kill off vampires in general, and Stephen Dorff's brat-pack-vampire bad guy in particular. The latter having a nasty scheme where he's intends to take over the world (or something).
The film starts off, and continues, in quite a violent fashion. It's definitely not PG-13 stuff either, but surprisingly hardcore action. In a sense, it's more gory and violent than the more "unreal" (but in my opinion, better) sequel Blade 2. For the first half or so, things happen at a steady pace with both nice action scenes and cool characters - but then things start to fall apart.
Gradually, the plot gets increasingly stupid, and the proceedings come to a screeching halt. Not that there has to be constant fighting and blood flying around, but the way too long and talky conclusion of the film was pretty uninteresting. I just couldn't give a damn about what happened anymore. The bleak gritty look that worked so well in the first half suddenly just feels gray and boring.
Some editing to tighten the film and keep up the pace from the opening would have made it so much better. As would a decision to forget about dodgy CG-characters for the end battle in favour of some man to man (or as the case may be - vampire to vampire) battle that doesn't leave one character fighting a blue screen. [5/10]