Surprisingly successful comic-book mishmash

Rating: Null/10 (26 May 1999)

It's sub-par to "The Crow" and "Batman Returns", which I consider to be the best comic-book filmizations that have become so prevalent in the past few years, but it's also quite skillfully done. It has bounce and pizzazz, to make up for the damage done by the ludicrous, stilted dialogue. It seems the only place fictional characters can talk hard-boiled anymore is in the comics or on "NYPD Blue", so "Blade" is forgiven for that.
It's also got Steven Dorff, who makes a terrific villain--he's jokey and he doesn't always chew on the scenery like you would expect him to. He also brings in the laughs, which is one of the colateral duties of movie villains these days.
Wesley Snipes gets the coolest costume of any recent comic-book movie hero we've seen, and he wears it well. He is well-suited for the chop-socky fight scenes and, as Blade probably doesn't emote too often, his stoicism gives the film a solid base.
N'Bushe Wright doesn't have much to do, which is a pity. She has the standard heroine-gets-in-a-nasty-dilemma number near the end, but it's too easy and therefore, isn't any fun.
The special effects will come off better on videotape than it did in the theatre, as will (strangely enough) the photography and the Mountain Dew editing. Stephen Norrington directs in the style of a Nine Inch Nails song, which gets to be a bit much near the end.