THE AISLE SEAT - "BLADE"
by Mike McGranaghan
Blade begins with what may very well be the bloodiest scene I've ever encountered in a movie. A young man is taken to a rave party by a sexy woman who has picked him up. He enters the warehouse, greeted by pulsing strobe lights and the metallic pounding of "house" music. Soon, the sprinkler system begins soaking the patrons in blood. The guy realizes that everyone in the place is a vampire, and they're all looking at him. For me, the scene was so disorienting that it became downright eerie. As more and more blood is poured on everyone, the vampires begin to resemble devils, and the man looks like he's bleeding from his entire body.
I admired the technique of the filmmaking, but was so unnerved by the sheer bloodiness of the scene that I almost felt like walking out. Two hours later, I was glad I had stayed. Blade is a surprisingly entertaining movie.
Wesley Snipes stars as the title character, a vampire hunter who has some vampire genes in his own blood. His pregnant mother was bitten by a vamp while he was still in the womb, making him a cross between human and undead creature. In a sort of self-loathing gesture, he has devoted his life to killing the evil bloodsuckers, even though he is partially one of them. Stephen Dorff plays Deacon Frost, an egotistical young vamp who wants to unleash a powerful being called the Blood God upon the world. Frost is merciless, having no respect for life. He's as deadly as they come and his plan is not complete without Blade's participation.
Blade is the latest in a series of films based on adult-oriented comics called "graphic novels" (Spawn and The Crow are two other recent examples). These stories often feature morally ambiguous heroes trapped in a world of incessant violence. And, in fact, Blade is gory enough to make it unsuitable for children or squeamish adults. A lot of screen time is devoted to watching Blade destroy the vamps. At its most harmless, the violence here is similar to the vampire deaths on TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (one of my favorite shows) in which vampires simply dissolve. At its worst, we get a disgusting scene in which two vampires swell up and explode into a sea of blood.
Although the gore is often too graphic for my taste, director Stephen Norrington uses various camera tricks to give Blade an abundance of style and energy. Varying shutter speeds and super-fast camera movements create a comic book feel unlike anything I've seen before. The ultra-violence comes straight out of the graphic novels themselves, and a lot of the effects undeniably add a certain sense of primal fear to the story. Although disgusting, they are often an extension of the film's style; the aim isn't to wallow in violence, but to create a dangerous ambiance within the story itself. You get a very real sense of horror from Frost that you don't get from the asteroid in Armageddon or the lizard in Godzilla.
Even if the violence turns you off, there are other things to admire in Blade. The action scenes are among the most inventive of the summer, with Snipes clearly doing most of his own fighting. The guy's a regular Jackie Chan in this movie. I often enjoy watching martial arts displays in the movies, especially when they are done this creatively. The bad guys don't merely fall when kicked, they fly across the room. Snipes is very believable as a hero, and he plays well off Stephen Dorff, whose cocky brashness is well put to use here (I have not been a fan of his other works). There is also a thrilling chase inside a subway system and some stunning effects in which the vampires' inner beings emerge from their bodily hosts.
And I like the character of Blade himself. He has some unusual compulsions. At one point, he tells a hematologist (N'Bushe Wright) whom he has saved that every time he kills a bloodsucker, it's "like getting a small piece of my old life back." Killing vampires is, for him, a strange therapy that lets him kill the part of himself that is most painful to acknowledge.
Obviously, this movie isn't going to be everybody's cup of tea. In fact, it usually isn't even mine. But Blade is exciting and occasionally very spooky. I wish it had been less gory, but I admired the way it brings the feel of a graphic novel effectively to life.
(
out of four)
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