Blade

This won't be an in-depth review, because I don't know that Blade needs one. This is a movie that shamelessly wears its intentions, capabilities, and limitations right out on its sleeve. It is unabashedly late 90's, in style, set design, music, action, editing, direction, script, and plotting, and you're either on board for it or you're not. It has plot contrivances that strain the credulity of a movie about a half vampire that can walk around in the daylight that the movie has zero intention of resolving, because it is too cool to care. It doesn't have nearly enough plot to fill two hours of run time, but the movie does not care one bit, because the plot, such as it is, is merely a vehicle to get to the next scene of kicking ass. You take this movie at face value not because it scratching below the surface reveals something you don't want to see, but because there is nothing beyond the surface. It is exactly what you see, and it is proud to be that way. I do wish I'd not passed up on seeing this back when it came out, because I think I'd have loved it. Seeing it now, I mean, yeah, it's fine, and I'm not disappointed by its faults. I had an idea of what I was getting into, and it pretty much met them, but please take note I said "met", and not "lived up" or "lived down". I got exactly what I expected, which was a campy, cliche-ridden, mindless action flick, and that's what I got, and nothing else. I had fun, but I also have no desire to see the sequels. This is a good Saturday afternoon schlockfest, but unless a person has extraordinary nostalgia for the 90's, I don't see many viewers getting anything out of this that they won't get, and done better, somewhere else.