True to form, Blade doesn't suck

Rating: 7/10 (15 September 2016)

He kicks enough slow-mo ass in a long black coat to make Neo go "Whoa." He rocks a vampire franchise slick and edgy enough to make RPatz whimper. And he brings enough spurting blood to the superhero blockbuster to make Kevin Feige faint. He's Blade - breakout star of the era when the term 'superhero film' was largely tantamount to 'campy garbage'. And he's a welcome shot of adrenaline to the current day multiplexes bursting at the seams with his more bloodless (ha) brethren. Respect.
Director Stephen Norrington knows exactly how to stay on the fun side of campy, and goes right for the jugular in doing so, offering a slick, taut, and hugely entertaining bloodbath. Eschewing both a redundant origin story and some of the decade's more frantic action editing, Blade is marvellously paced, ticking along, shark-like, from exposition to action interlude and back with the hypnotic steadiness of blood pulsing through veins. It's hardly an ambitious plot (stop the pending vampocalypse, natch), but lent welcome life from Norrington and writer David S. Goyer's more inventively gruesome touches. Check out the sprinklers at the underground vampire nightclub dousing the raving crowd in blood in a gleefully macabre Carrie homage, amidst the film's inspired opening sequence, and it's impossible to deny you're in for a garishly amusing treat.
Granted, some of the film's stylistic choices (Mark Isham's industrial-influenced soundtrack) age better than others (DP Theo van de Sande shooting the film like a streaky, jump-cutting '90s hip hop video is fairly jarring). But Norrington's flair for the grotesque helps punch up the monster horror fun. His prosthetic deformities and bubbling corpses playfully pilfer the best of Total Recall and Raiders of the Lost Ark, just as the classist in-fighting in the vampire ranks (born vampires sneering condescension at 'turned' bloodsuckers) lends odd nuance to the villainous MacGuffin, while a sterling climactic setpiece amidst a (practical set!) marble vampire temple is as sleekly Gothic as you could ask for. Blade may not reinvent the action wheel, but it certainly gives it a good, vigorous spin in the right direction.
As the titular vampire hunter (no, not Abraham Lincoln), Wesley Snipes firmly establishes himself as one of the more reliable '90s badasses. His icy charisma is easily enough to carry the film, even if his attempts at infusing Blade's monolithic masculinity with humour through bursts of twitchy sassiness may take some adjusting to. Still, anyone who can sell a punchline as corny as "Some motherf*ckers are always trying to ice-skate uphill" with dignity intact is worth of accolades in my books. Supporting Snipes, N'Bushe Wright astutely refuses any damsel in distress clichés with a welcome, hardened charisma, at the cost of occasionally neglected to react appropriately to some of the film's more fearsome scenarios. Similarly, as the film's central antagonist, Stephen Dorff is perfectly oily, but his refusal to chew scenery in favour of a more subtle creepiness backfires somewhat, making him a suitable, but fairly forgettable foe. Finally, Kris Kristofferson lends his 'gruff mentor' archetype an appealingly indignant crustiness, bagging many of the film's better lines in the process.
As the bodies hit the floor amidst the flurries of impressively executed, cathartically bloody action choreography, a realization sinks in: Blade, for all its leather-clad macho posturing, is a remarkably unpretentious film. It's fun, no- nonsense, and down and dirty, in the ways that only a moderately-budgeted franchise film with low expectations but high potential can be. You can practically see the seeds for 2016's Deadpool's rampant success being lain, albeit with only the tiniest winks of its fourth-wall-toppling zaniness. Still, nearly 20 years on, Blade remains an adeptly unapologetic slice of entertainment. If you're thinking of giving it a pass, as Blade himself succinctly says, "Motherf*cker, are you out of your damn mind?!"
-7.5/10