Snipes is a charismatic vampire-human action hero in this exciting, energetic pre-MCU Marvel movie from 1998
The first film in the Blade trilogy, made in 1998, is getting a re-release: Wesley Snipes is the implacable and massively ripped daywalker marching around in his shades and leatherised protective armour, slaying the vampires with his cold steel implements and martial-arts skills. Part action hero, part superhero, Blade is a vampire-human halfbreed born from a pregnant woman, for whom
Labour was horribly induced by the trauma of being bitten. So he has vampire powers but is endowed with the ability to withstand daylight; he is forced to consume a certain serum to suppress his blood-thirst, a methadone substitute for the real thing.
As a homeless, friendless street kid, Blade came under the protection of Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), a tough old guy who instilled in Blade the vampire-hunting vocation. N’Bushe Wright plays Karen Jenson, the hospital doctor and haematologist who is bitten by a vampire and needs Blade’s help; sneery-pouty Stephen Dorff plays Deacon Front, the posturing vampire-villain who believes he can defeat Blade and achieve mastery of the entire vampire netherworld on earth, and Udo Kier is Dragonetti, the dead-eyed vampire elder who resents the upstart Frost, for upending Dragonetti’s centuries-old realpolitik accommodation with humankind. Frost jeers: “These people are our food, not our allies!”