GAMES: GameSpot | GameFAQs MUSIC: Last.fm | MP3.com MOVIES: Metacritic | Movietome TV: TV.com
Home | About Metacritic | About Metascores | What's New | Wireless Versions | Discussion Forums | Advertising Inquiries | Contact Us | RSS
Metacritic.com: We Deal With Criticism
     Help
> Switch to Advanced Search  
Film Video/DVD Music Games TV

DVD and Video

Upcoming Release Calendar
Awards & Bests By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

 



 

Printer-Friendly Version Email This Page Discuss In Our Forums

Blade
New Line Cinema

Blade reviews
Critic Score
Metascore: 45 Metascore out of 100
User Score  
8.0 out of 10
based on 23 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
based on 10 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

MPAA RATING: R for strong, pervasive vampire violence and gore, language, and brief sexuality

Starring Wesley Snipes, Stephen Dorff, Kris Kristofferson, N'Bushe Wright, Donal Logue, Udo Kier, Arly Jover, and Traci Lords

The legend of an immortal warrior who battles a thriving underworld of vampires seeking to decimate the human race.


GENRE(S): Suspense/Thriller  
WRITTEN BY: David S. Goyer  
DIRECTED BY: Stephen Norrington  
RELEASE DATE: DVD: March 5, 2002 
Video: June 1, 1999 
Theatrical: August 21, 1998 
RUNNING TIME: 120 minutes, Color 
ORIGIN: USA 

What The Critics Said

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

80
Film.com Tom Keogh
A pulsing, wooshing, visceral experience that amounts to great fun and an entirely disposable movie.
75
Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert
Wesley Snipes understands the material from the inside out and makes an effective Blade because he knows that the key ingredient in any interesting superhero is not omnipotence, but vulnerability.
Read Full Review
75
San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle
Big as it is, Blade' is meticulous and subtle, not just in its camera technique but in the way it works its themes and creates a mood.
Read Full Review
70
Salon.com Charles Taylor
Blade in no way resembles a good movie, but its combination of music-video bombast, goth-rock sensibility, high-tech industrial production design, cold-blooded glossy magazine visuals, high-fashion club culture, horror movies, blaxploitation movies, Hong Kong movies and comic-book nihilism make it diverting trash.
Read Full Review
70
The Onion (A.V. Club) John Krewson
Sure, the story is pretty standard, and the dialogue is laughable or worse. But creative cinematography and non-stop, decently choreographed gratuitous violence make watching this comic-book movie—Blade is a minor, almost-forgotten Marvel comic—entertaining.
Read Full Review
67
Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov
"Interview With the Vampire" it's not, but marginally thrilling nonetheless, and besides, any film that features a house party in which the ceiling-mounted fire extinguishers expel freshets of crimson goo in place of H2O gets my vote.
Read Full Review
63
ReelViews James Berardinelli
By the time the film is well into its second hour, we begin to wonder whether there's ever going to be a variation on the carnage and mayhem. As it turns out, there isn't.
Read Full Review
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey
Blade doesn't manage to work up a whole lot of suspense.
Read Full Review
60
Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan
Blade's stomach-turning special effects, bone-crunching martial arts and cynical humor will more than satisfy any action-film addict's need for a fix of eye-popping escapist adrenaline.
Read Full Review
50
New Times (L.A.) Andy Klein
At best, second-rate pulp, hampered by excessive length, a thematically meandering screenplay, and a general lack of excitement.
Read Full Review
50
USA Today Susan Wloszczyna
Director Stephen Norrington is more keen on finding new ways to explode the fiends... than developing a credible story. So the movie flits from one gore-laden assault to another with little suspense.
Read Full Review
50
Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt
For most of its two-hour running time it simply flings a barrage of horrors at the audience, enhanced with the most imaginative science-fiction atmospherics this side of "Dark City," which incidentally was a far more original picture.
Read Full Review
50
Los Angeles Times Gene Seymour
The noir atmosphere doesn't quite smother the dialogue's cheesy smell.
Read Full Review
40
The New York Times Stephen Holden
Although the opening scene suggests a dark urban satire, Blade quickly turns into a cartoonish futuristic action-adventure yarn in which Blade is the only thing keeping humanity from being exterminated by vampires in a hematological holocaust.
Read Full Review
40
Variety Dennis Harvey
Though slick and diverting in some aspects, increasingly silly pic has trouble meshing disparate elements --- horror, superhero fantasy, straight-up action --- into a workable whole.
Read Full Review
38
San Francisco Examiner Walter Addiego
If only it wasn't such bloody nonsense.
Read Full Review
38
Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington
Often ridiculous, mostly poorly written and, surprisingly poorly acted too. No matter how many flashy scenes the filmmakers shoot, the bad lines just keep dripping down. [21 Aug 1998]
30
Washington Post Rita Kempley
A vulgar attempt to revamp the undead genre by introducing computer-generated splatter and a casketful of themes from genetic tinkering to conspiracy theories.
Read Full Review
30
TV Guide Ken Fox
The few good lines go to Kristofferson and the ever-amusing Kier, but Snipes's considerable energy is buried under an affectless, Terminator-style demeanor.
Read Full Review
30
The New Yorker Sarah Kerr
Adapted from the Marvel Comics series, this movie lacks the mournfulness that sustains a good horror strip; it's trashy, but too deafening and invasive to have the appeal of good pulp.
Read Full Review
25
New York Daily News Dave Kehr
Pure hackwork.
25
Entertainment Weekly Staff (Not Credited)
The action involves lots of second-rate martial-arts choreography (made even less thrilling by the video's pan-and-scan job), while the psychological conflicts are filled with unconvincing angst.
Read Full Review
20
LA Weekly Paul Malcolm
Working from a script by David S. Goyer ("Dark City") that lacks any sense of humor or character, Snipes seems unsure if he should vamp it up or play it straight, while Dorff just plain sucks.
Read Full Review

What Our Users Said

Vote Now!The average user rating for this movie is 8.0 (out of 10) based on 10 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Tyson B. gave it a10:
The start of something great.

[Anonymous] gave it a5:
A major dissapointment. Snipes is good, but that plot is a mess, and the action, while at times cool, is rahter blunt in excecution. No sneaking up, just breaking stright in, which take the fun out of things. Cheesy blood is to cliched. THere are more substantial ways to get action.

Peter H. gave it a9:
An ecxellent action film with lots of style and shine.

Shyam S. gave it a 10:
Best movie ever made. Snipes: best actor ever to grace our screens.

Justin J. gave it a 10:
COOOOOOOOOOOLLLLL.

Pat C. gave it a 6:
As the original was actually quite entertaining.

Dave C. gave it a 4:
As a viewer, I have never felt this much like being taken for a moron. The screenwriter seems feel the need to throw every plot element in your face 100 times until you get it. The special effects are incredibly naff aswell and Stephen Dorff lacks any sort of intensity as the villain and winds up being about as scary as Rita from the Power Ranger and just comes off as plain annoying (though this does make you want him to die more). I've seen better graphics on Windows 95. I won't go as far as saying this film is as bad as John Carpenter's Vampires or Vampire Hunter D. After all, a lot of the ideas in this film are very imaginative and original and the scenes where Snipes is kicking vampire ass are not to be missed, but it's still bad. Snipes yet again proves that he is a talented actor with an atrocious taste in movie scripts (remember Passenger 57?).

Read more user comments...

Discuss this movie in our forums

Return to top of page
Home | FILM | DVD/VIDEO | MUSIC | GAMES | TV | Forums | About Metacritic metacritic.com

Popular on CBS sites: iPhone 3G | Fantasy Football | Moneywatch | Antivirus Software | Recipes | E3 2009

About CBS Interactive | Jobs | Advertise

© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use