As good as a vampire-hunting film comes

Rating: Null/10 (12 November 1999)

Recent action directors have carried with them a message about how to make an exciting action film. This is the message: if you're going to make an action scene, make it look really good. "The Matrix" directors Andy and Larry Wachowski took with them that message, as did Alex Proyas with "The Crow", and so does director Stephen Norrington with the best vampire-hunting film ever made, "Blade". Wesley Snipes and Stephen Dorff star.

Blade (Snipes) is a part-human, part-immortal vampire hunter who was born just as his mother was giving birth to him. At the time, she had been bitten by a vampire directly before she gave birth to Blade. That was 1967. Jump 32 years into the future, and you will arrive on the present day, where an evil vampire lord named Deacon Frost (Dorff) has begun to act on his plan to overthrow the human race and populate the world with vampires. Blade has become a full-fledged warrior who, with the help of his friend and mentor Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) intends to stop Deacon Frost from doing so.

Frost, however, has some more plans of his own. He has translated the vampire language (and God knows what it's called) and now has the ability to summon the power of the Blood God, an evil spirit which will make it that much easier to overthrow the human race. The whole vampire population will be given powers allowing them to never be hurt, even by a wooden stake. Blade must stop this from happening as well, before the world is taken over by vampires.

"Blade" was a violent, exciting, well-crafted action-horror film, if not having been rather gory for most of its duration. The film is visually arresting, with excellent cinematography and film editing so hypnotic, you'd think the film itself was on speed. There was also a powerhouse techno soundtrack, featuring a fast remix of New World Order's "Confusion" which made the action scenes more exciting yet. The special-effects were generally good dazzling, although some were extremely unconvincing. And as for the acting, well, Stephen Dorff was respectably terrifying as the evil Deacon Frost, and Wesley Snipes is all right, although this is not even close to his best performance. But the film is so atmospheric and energetic that you hardly have any time to pay attention to the acting. I give "Blade" 3 stars on a five star scale.