| Director Stephen Norrington delivers a powerhouse live-action movie adaptation of the classic comic book character, transformed into the half-human vampire slayer, Blade. Starring N'Bushe Wright, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, Donal Logue, Udo Kier, and featuring Wesley Snipes in raw, althletic form for the title role, the film introduces the world of action cinema to a vision that set many of the standards for Hollywood action movies today!
The movie is both unique and wonderful, not just because of the overall high production quality, especially with reference to the film's action sequences, which are respective for most, to the nature of urban Hong Kong-stylized martial arts fight coordination and choreography, courtesy of action directors Jeff Ward, Wesley Snipes and Chuck Jeffereys.
The film is so ardently brilliant and entertaining, that there are not a lot of movies in the market that can manage to combine so many sub-genres in such a well formulated fashion that can appease the viewing public.
Even today, there are still films that seem to come short of the standards set by the Blade franchise, like like the brutally appalling low-budget action/horror feature, Shadow: Dead Riot, starring Carla Greene and directed by Hong Kong film veterans Derek Wan and Tony Leung Siu-Hung, or Uwe Boll's video game-to-big screen Hollywood feature, House Of The Dead, which redefined the true meaning of the word, SUCK!!!
The other element that helped this movie become such a success is that this is the one true movie, long after Passenger 57, that allowed Wesley Snipes to truly stand out as an action star, showing his raw, electrifying athleticism as a martial artist, as well as an actor! This stood out as a plus for US action fans waiting for the next best thing other than another bad Don Wilson or Jalal Merhi movie to hit the B-market surface.
Conclusively, Blade is a consistently entertaining film that regards every important element that was needed for this film to work. Hong Kong action junkies, sci-fi geeks and shriek show fanatics will get a true kick out of what Norrington brought to the table in this fine piece of action cinema!
OTHER RECOMMENDATIONS: "The Evil Dead", "The Evil Dead 2", "Night Of The Living Dead", Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master", "Black Mask", "The Mummy", "The Mummy Returns", "Mortal Kombat", "Makai Tensho", "Brotherhood Of The Wolf", "Lethal Weapon 2", "Resident Evil: Apocalypse", "Doom", "Versus", "Aragami", "Passenger 57", "The Art Of War", "Blade 2", "The Matrix Trilogy", "Arahan: Urban Martial Arts Action", "Volcano High", "Underworld", "Underworld: Evolution", "Desperado", "Highlander: Endgame", "Guyver: Dark Hero" and "Action Jackson".
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