Blade

As Popeye used to say. "Well, blow me down," because "Blade" isn't nearly as shitty as I expected. What happens when you combine a vampire story, Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff and techno music? A bad case of the runs, I would think. But, not here. Rather, this movie comes out healthy, brown, gelatinous and as violent as a Sunday in the Yankee Stadium bleachers.

Blade is really just Batman, with vampires as the shit-kicking villains and Snipes as the moody hero whose mother kicked the bucket when he was but a wee one. Now he must avenge her fucking death. Instead of being a bat, Snipes is a half-human, half-vampire hellbent on saving the world from the millions of bloodsuckers that already walk amongst our midst, one such parasitic asshole works the night shift alongside me at Dunkin Donuts. Snipes has all the high-tech gadgets of Batman, a Bad-ass Blademobile, Kris Kristofferson as his Alfred - only this time roughed up by the Hell's Angels, and a boring-as-dick romantic interest in a whipsmart hematologist (N'Bushe Wright). For Christ's sake, Snipes even has a Batcave where Kristofferson waits to greet him every night.

The story begins with trouble a-brewin' in modern day Transylvania, transferred to the bowels of Manhattan. A young upstart bloodsucker played by the lame Stephen Dorff hassles the old guard vampires who, in this film, look and act like the staid Swiss bankers that hold all the gold the Nazis stole from the Jews. Dorff, not to be confused with the hilarious dwarf played by Tim Conway on home videos because he is actually an unlikeable asshole, wants the vampires to take over the world. His elders just want to watch their mutual funds mature. Who should stand in the way of Dorff's plans? None other than ass-kicking Snipes. Snipes keeps killing Dorff's foot soldiers at stylish vampire get-togethers, which infuriates the bad guys to no fucking end.

But Dorff needs to capture Snipes and keep him alive. You see, his blood is necessary to invoke some ancient spell which triggers Dorff's world-domination scheme. Why the blood is needed is never really explained, but it is probably because the story would suck my ass if all the vampires had to do was kill Snipes. Along the way to an ultra-violent showdown Snipes falls in love with the aforementioned brainiac piece of ass Wright, learns to cherish his latently homosexual relationship with Kristofferson, and switches from the Blademobile to the Bladecycle for no reason other than the studio spent money on a fancy one.

The picture is fan-fucking-tastic to look at. They put the do-re-mi on the screen. Moody, blue lighting, pasty skin, and MTV style editing so the kiddies don't get distracted. The action, for most of the film, is non-stop, balletic, fresh, fast-paced and intriguing. Lots of martial arts, shoot-em-up, and broken glass. The plot is a simple and unique twist on the same old vampire story. Yes, these vampires are still "me-first" but the idea of them already being everywhere and fighting among their own ranks is fresh shit. And Blade makes a better Batman than the one that Warner Brothers keeps puking onto screens. As an added bonus, there is a deapan humor throughout the film that is actually funny.

On the down side are the innumerable sheets of glass that must be noisily shattered in every fight sequence. I swear to God that the filmmakers went out of their way to add glass to every fight. There is such a thing as too much action and this movie has it by the shitload. Not a single scene goes by without America's youths being further desensitized through on-screen decapitations, amputations, blood-lettings and ass-kicking. In fact, the screenwriter and director seemed to have run out of ideas for the last fifteen minutes and just said, "Aw, fuck. I give up. How about if they have a really big fistfight?" True to the modern action genre, the plot has inconsistencies that will bother anyone not too absorbed in the on-screen mayhem. Snipes 

has a trick sword that sometimes cuts its holder's hands off, and sometimes it doesn't. It all depends on what is needed by the plot. Dorff manages to crack a code that nobody else could. And he doesn't even try very hard, the lazy jack-off. In the end Dorff attains immortality... and then Snipes kills him. What the fuck?

But the biggest downside to this flick is Dorff. That little shit couldn't act his way past the gerbil in Richard Gere's ass. When he speaks, he jerks his head like a pigeons, probably because the prick thinks that's acting. He's such a pussy that he's completely unbelievable as an evil mastermind. I'm more likely to believe he would be the co-worker that says he'll cover your shift at the Qwik-E-Mart, doesn't show up and then tells the manager he never agreed to work. What a sniveling asshole.

Blade is ass-kicking action; stupid and moderately entertaining. I give it a Not-so-fucking-bad.