Blade (1998)

With 2 years ahead of us that will be jam packed with Comic Book movie adaptations, 2011 and 2012 are set to apitomise what the sub-genre is about, huge special effect driven blockbusters, manditory origin tales and plenty of "I will use these powers for good" moments... Director Stephen Norrington brought us a dark, brooding, action packed martial arts Vampire flick in the form of Blade, Starring Wesley Snipes as the titular Badass.

We hear about Blades beginnings through the perspective of Dr Karen Jenson (N'Bushe Wright), why he does what he does, acting as a lone wolf killing of these vamps as he is part human, and part vampire himself. Dubbed the "Daywalker" by the vampire community he and his comrade and mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson)create weapons and vehicles finding new ways to wipe this plague off the face of the earth.

While opening the film in an energetic night club, the film doesn't take the "tech-noir" aproach to cinema a lot of late 90's films (The Matrix) did, instead it was just a set peice to wipe out doezens of blood sucking creepos with the baddest black dude around. The film goes about its 2 hour run time finding a good balance between lead character developement and villainous scheming. While not your typical villain vamp, Stephen Doriff manages to contemporise vampires while maintaining that elegance and restrain they have been known for, while also managing to be menacing when he needs to be.

The balance in this film was just right. The rebellious nature of the younger vampires, I felt was a great metaphor for our teenage years, the "Pure blood's" (those born vampires, not bitten) Look down upon them, and rule how they should live their lives, I even understand that need to rebel, Deacon Frost (Doriff) just decides to do that by raising a blood/vampire god thingy. not cool.

Overall, the story and action were well handled and every fight scene, weapon and item of clothing added just the flare, and rang true with the character of Blade they had set up, proving that divulging from the Comic book source material can be a good thing (in the books he was a human who was immune to vampire bites) it set the bar for comic book movies of the 21st century, making the character your own and creating a great story, characters and memorising action. Hollywood, and Marvel it would seem, didn't get the message.8/10