Blade

I'm tempted to make a cutting remark

Blade is often derided as just another gritty action flick from the late 90's. Its all black leather, blue colour correction and scowling with gun play and punching interspersed throughout and set to a soundtrack of Rap/Techno/Alt-Rock. A surface level appraisal like that would probably turn a lot of people away, especially when you tell them the much maligned David S. Goyer wrote the script. But when you get down to it this is actually a very important film in the history of cinema and, surprisingly enough, its actually rather good.

Stephen Norrington's Blade was released in 1998, right in the Leather clad 90's angst wave the would crest with The Matrix just a year later, and stars world famous Tax-dodger Wesley Snipes as Blade, a half-vampiric vampire hunter who first appeared in the pages of Marvel Comics back in 1973. Many consider this to be Snipes best role and I can see why. He manages to make Blade a strangely relatable character despite his super powers, due in no small part to how well he sells that despite having a high healing factor, it still really bloody hurts to get shot. Snipes could have made his whole career on the strength of his pained grimaces and snarls. They're just that good.

The story is a fairly by the numbers comic book movie, which is impressive when you consider that this is the second Marvel movie to get an actual release. Blade goes up against an upstart vampire named Deacon Frost who's trying to start a quote “Vampire Apocalypse” (which sounds pretty dope to be honest) and is aided by his mentor Whistler and by a haematologist named Karen who gets caught in the middle of a Hunt and has to try and find a cure for her encroaching Vampirism. She serves as both the audience surrogate and as a partner for Blade, who teaches her the rules of the Vampire underworld and she provides him with backup and tries to find a way to help him keep his blood lust in check. Their dynamic is refreshingly free of sexual tension, rather they find themselves paired together by circumstance and develop a respect for each other based on their mutual ability to bash vampire heads in.

So a surprisingly enjoyable story then, but the action scenes? Surprisingly good as well. The gunfights are a little bit bland, except for a scene in the first act where some Ten police officers all shoot out of a window to try and stop Blade from running off with Karen's dying body which is funny as hell due to their sub Stormtrooper aim. But the hand to hand fights are these amazingly choreographed spectacles where you get to see and feel every hit. The minimal editing and camera movement gives them a sort of clarity that you don't see as much in modern Western Cinema, and the stunt performers and choreographers bring their A-game for even the smallest scrap. And they're placed at just the right moments to keep the story moving along at a fun pace that keeps the two hour run time feeling light and fresh.

This movie marks the moment that Marvel realised that people wanted to see their characters on the Big-Screen. This wonderful lump of Gen-X-Angst is the reason Robert Downey Junior got his chance to become a Hollywood mega star and why Comic Book movies define the cinema landscape now. Which is hardly surprising, because it sure as shit wasn't going to be Howard the Duck.