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Blade

This is one of those films that, for some reason, everyone seems to have seen at some point, and I hadn't. There are plenty of these. So it made it onto the list, and I watched it.

And, may I just say, what a Very Silly Film this is? If it hadn't been happening at the end of quite a long day, and there hadn't been pizza, I'm not sure I would have made it all the way through. The plot is a fairly simple vampire-killing one, with Blade as a sort-of-kind-of-vampire who is hunting for the vampire who killed his mother - who turns out not to be dead, and the vampire who killed his mother turns out to be his nemesis! Who'd have guessed?

There's some potential here, and it gets totally wasted - there's stuff about identity and mixed-race and purebloods from the vampiric side that hooks in quite interestingly with the fact that Blade and his love interest are black and there's a whole thing going on with an Asian population as well that feels rather uncomfortable - but you don't get any real exploration of those connections, which feels like a waste. The characters are a waste too - there's no real development, they turn up on screen fairly perfectly formed and shallow and don't do much else. The love interest, in particular, suddenly turns into Judo Queen Extraordinaire in a rather unconvincing fashion.

Plus there is comedy!violence, which isn't actually that comic at all, and frankly felt rather gratuitious. I can't be having with that sort of thing.

So, two stars, although I'm quite glad to have got it out of my system.

Date: 2009-09-23 06:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com
I quite liked 'Blade', although it's highly nonsensical. I love Udo Kier, and I could really have done with more Traci Lords (underused) and yay, Kris Kirstofferson! Like you, I thought there was a *lot* of interesting stuff about race, purity & identity in there, and Stephen Dorff character had the potential to be really interesting, though it all got annoyingly rushed into Big Action Showdown (apparently, they made a substantial change to the ending when testing showed the original came across as,w ell, ridiculous). I didn't mind too much since I didn't expect it to be very serious, and I thought some of the set-pieces were beautiful, but yeah, it did feel as if there were a lot of missed opportunities there. I probably did well not having any expectations of it being particularly good, since I was therefore pleasantly surprised, but I wouldn't consider it a work of deathless genius.

As to gratuitous violence, I freely admit that I'm a bit of a sucker for sword porn...

Date: 2009-09-23 07:35 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] mejoff.livejournal.com
Thye short lived TV series is infact massively superior

Date: 2009-09-24 12:53 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] ashfae.livejournal.com
Blade amused the heck out of me. It was so silly!

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