Review for Blade

Introduction

When you have a DVD from the previous century, it goes to the top of the list of Blu-ray double dips, as regardless of how good the disc looked back then, it surely won’t get proper justice on a modern HD set-up. Also, Blade (released in the UK on DVD in 1999) has a special place in my heart as one of the first of the modern, realistic takes on the superhero genre, pre-dating The X-Men by two years, which most would consider the first of the new wave of comic book adaptations. Blade did it first, taking a Marvel comic book to the big screen, while keeping it real. In fact, Blade’s subject matter was so dark in nature that it’s one of the rare comic adaptations to get an 18 rating. When you add in the great action sequences, the inventive cinematography, and the engaging direction, then it almost becomes obligatory to watch this movie on Blu-ray, which is what I have just done.


Blade is a legend, as the Daywalker he fights the scourge of vampires in search of vengeance for the accident of his birth. A vampire attacked his mother when she was pregnant and the child was born a hybrid. He has the unnatural strength of a vampire and the same thirst for blood, but sunlight, silver and other traditional weapons against vampires have no effect on him. With the aid of his mentor Whistler and a serum that controls his thirst for human blood, he battles the hidden vampire nation. It’s during one of these confrontations that he encounters a haematologist, Karen who he rescues from the clutches of a vampire. Against his better judgement, he helps her when it seems all too inevitable that she will become a vampire herself. She believes that she’ll be able to cure herself and maybe Blade as well, but the vampire, Deacon Frost has other intentions. Following the words of an ancient prophecy he will resurrect the evil of La Magra and inundate the world with evil. The blood of the Daywalker is essential in his plans. The two are destined to collide in an explosive confrontation.

Picture

Blade gets a 2.40:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. You’ll have to go to the videophiles with the 90 inch screens, who sit at two feet remove from the action to get a decent discussion of flaws with the transfer. I found it to be an exquisite transfer of a film source, bringing it to life with all the grain, the slight wobble, all those things that make film feel real. The image quality is sharp, clear, and the film’s inventive colour timing comes across with impact. Detail levels are high, dark detail is rich as is the contrast, and blacks look great. There might be some white bloom in certain scenes, but it’s more than likely the over-exposed bleach-bypass look is a deliberate creative choice on the part of the filmmakers, not a Blu-ray author getting inventive. With this kind of clarity, the only sticking point is that some of the CGI, which looked creaky on DVD, is woeful in HD. But by the time the film’s finale arrives, which is where the La Magra effects lose on the budget, you’ll have long since suspended your disbelief.

Sound

The all important detail here is the DTS-HD MA 6.1 Surround English soundtrack, which kicks arse. It’s a fully enveloping surround track, making the most of the film’s action sequences, and getting that Matrix-era techno heavy music soundtrack to your ears in as effective a way as possible. And with all the action and music assaulting your ears, the dialogue still remains clear throughout. Other soundtracks on the disc include DD 5.1 Castilian Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, DD 2.0 Stereo Czech, and Latin Spanish, and DD 2.0 mono Brazilian Portuguese. You get subtitles in all of these languages and Dutch on top.

Extras

The disc presents its content with a static menu screen.

It lifts most of its extras from the US New Line DVD release, but annoyingly leaves some out, also leaving some out from the UK EiV DVD release, which itself just held a subset of the US extras. So no isolated score, no deleted scenes, and no cast and crew biographies and mini-interviews.

But you do get the patchwork commentary track with the cast and crew. You also get the La Magra featurette (14 mins), the Designing Blade featurette (22½ minutes), The Theatrical Trailer (2 mins), The Origins of Blade: A Look at Dark Comics featurette (12 mins), and The Blood Tide featurette (20 mins), the latter two making their UK home video debuts. All of these extras are presented in 480i SD.

One more Blu-ray for which I can’t throw away the DVD.

Conclusion

It’s been 15 years, but Blade still feels fresh and edgy today. It took a big risk making the transition from comic book to big screen, even more so as its 18 rated content meant that it wouldn’t play to those who at the time were considered to be the comic book audience. Given its content and the uncompromising approach to its storytelling, it really does stand out from the other comic book movies even today. You’d expect that if someone today were to adapt Blade, they would be constrained by the 12A target that all comic book movies aim for, to get as many bums on seats as possible. You wouldn’t get all the jaw dropping, brilliantly choreographed violence, and you certainly wouldn’t get the great dialogue.


Wesley Snipes owns the title role here, and he has considerable screen presence and style as the tormented vampire hybrid. And you get straight to the meat of the story and the character with only a single scene given over to his origins, as opposed to the half an hour or so that a more traditional comic book movie would require. It’s a smart way of telling a story, with less of the exposition, and more about discovering the characters through the narrative, and the actors’ portrayals. It also helps that with vampires as your subject matter, the audience is already going to know the short hand for the genre, and the exposition really only becomes a matter of refining the rules of this particular universe. You’d think that with characters as ingrained in the public consciousness as Batman, Superman and Spiderman, we could do without their origin stories, but we get them again and again with each new iteration of their particular movie franchises. Blade and the X-Men both got their storytelling right the first time around.


The story is typical comic book fare, with the world in peril from an ultimate evil, and only our heroes standing in the way against eternal darkness. There is going to be a big action set piece to round things off, and it’s all about the journey there, revealing the characters, applying some drama, and offering copious action. Blade does it with such unmitigated style! The characters are engaging, but the cinematography holds the attention, while the film’s direction and editing are arresting and organic, playing with the perception of time and atmosphere. One minute you might go from a bleach-bypass scene, to something heavily colour timed, then to full on Technicolor. You’ll get strobe effects, slow motion, time lapse photography, all various devices used to tell the story, which shouldn’t go together, but all somehow meld into a glorious whole.

In some ways, Blade is still one of the best of the modern superhero movies that it heralded. The less said about the sequels the better, but without studio requirements to guarantee mainstream audiences, it delivers the kind of edgy R-rated action that is now a thing of the past in cinema. It’s also well written, and with great characters. The only thing letting it down is a lack of budget in the final act. And it looks fantastic on Blu-ray!