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Tuesday, June 18, 2024

BLADE (1998)

BLADE, the half-vampire comic-book anti-hero set for a 2025 reboot as part of the MARVEL CINEMATIC UNIVERSE, is apparently having teething pains after the latest director ankled.  Twenty-six years back, it might not have mattered if kinetic, but faceless director Stephen Norrington walked off* as scripter David S. Goyer (who’d helm the third in the series - not seen here) and the commanding presence of Wesley Snipes’ Blade already fully run tone & storyline.  With hardly a bit of outside action, it’s all infra-dig vampire counterculture, Snipes is perfectly cast in what boils down to a drug addiction allegory (demi-vampire Blade tries to ‘kick’ his human blood habit with a methadone-like serum) while the living-dead underworld hierarchy wage internal (or is it interminable?)  battle.   Stephen Dorff is bad & buff as a mad-for-power impure vampire; Kris Kristofferson has a rare good post-leading man role as a serum researcher; but N'Bushe Wright is a complete bust, chemistry-free as doctor/love-interest.  For a while, cool gross-out effects (an intriguing mix of digital & practical) keep you involved, but before long Goyer’s brutish atmosphere (familiar from the Chris Nolan BATMAN films) and Hobbesian outlook wear you down.  So when the climax comes ‘round and Blade is trapped in a sort of Iron Maiden for blood extraction, it’s no more suspenseful or exciting then waiting for a Panini Press to time out.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID/LINK:  *With a rep for being ‘difficult,’ director Stephen Norrington’s career never recovered after his fourth film, THE LEAGUE OF EXTRAORDINARY GENTLEMEN/’03 tanked.  https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/the-league-of-extraordinary-gentlemen.html

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