Blade with Wesley Snipes

Blade, or ‘The Daywalker’ as he’s referred to by his enemies, is cool character played by Wesley Snipes in a trilogy of movies that offers some cool special effects, dark comic book style storytelling while throwing in a little martial arts action to keep things even more interesting.

The first film tells the story of Blade, and introduces the whole universe based loosely on the Marvel comics.  The basic premise is that Vampires are everywhere, they make treaties with the government, and have their hand in everything.  They blend in unbeknownst to most humans and feed on human blood.

There’s one big difference – Blade.  

Blade is kind of a hybrid between both human and Vampire.  He has all of the strengths with few of the weakness – he ages like a normal human (faster than a Vampire) and still has the thirst for blood.

Controlling his thirst with a shot, he is able to resist killing humans for food, and with the help of his father figure and weapons specialist Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) he quite successfully gets out there and kills vast numbers of vampires with the goal to eventually make them extinct.

When a vampire within the ranks has decided to do things his own way, going against the Vampire elders, he makes some enemies.  This Vampire – Deacon Frost (Stephen Dorff), has a very ambitious goal – to translate the ancient texts of the ‘Vampire bible’ and awaken the ‘Blood God’ to become all powerful.

So naturally Blade  is apart of his plan, so he goes after Blade while Blade goes after him and a highly visual and bloody movie with a fantastically dark atmosphere and top action.

Some very interesting things are going on…

There’s also a woman caught up in it all named Jenson.  She’s been bitten and is basically in the process of turning into a Vampire, but is also working on a cure.  Jenson is the character used to help relate the introduction of this universe to the audience.

It seems pretty apparent in the film that Blade stops to help Jenson because she reminds him of his mother (as she was bitten whilst pregnant with Blade – hence the ‘Daywalker’ hybrid he’s become).  This connection is looked at further in the film, and Blade is even reunited with his mother, having to deal with his past.

But while Blade and Jenson are dealing with their own issues, there’s also some interesting insight into the Vampire culture.

Not all vampires are equal!  

It seems the ‘pure bloods’, vampires born as vampires, look down on those who are ‘merely turned’.  This is interesting as it shows  that the prejudice doesn’t stop at humans vs vampires but continues to find it’s ways into subgroups of vampire culture.

This all creates a pretty nice and realistic tension between most of the characters in their groups.  The head of the ‘turned’ Vampire group, Frost, bites back at the pure bloods with intelligent comebacks and taking swift action, in a very ruthless style.

Both Frost and Blade have a way with words which is just outside of the predictable Hollywood movie norm, swearing a little more frequently and speaking in a manner that seems a little more realistic considering their environment.

Using these quality performances ‘Blade’ manages to hold a very dark and gritty atmosphere that really creates the image of a world that’s so filled with predators, with the human race being as defenseless as sheep.

The Action & Martial Arts

There’s a mixture of action between hand to hand fighting and gun fights, but also there’s the vampire element.  The action encompasses some interesting techniques for killing off Vampires with garlic, silver, and daylight – once again, incorporated in the armed and unarmed techniques.

Wesley Snipes offers a pretty solid performance in terms of martial arts techniques.  Having trained most of his life, you can see some natural and authentic movements mixed among the vast array of action.

Overall as a martial arts movie is ok, but as a on action movie in general ‘Blade’ delivers.  Definitely worth watching!

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