“Blade” clearly wants to be stylish and exciting but it comes across as merely tedious. The film places far too much emphasis on the violence and forgets pretty much everything else. “Blade” is of course a Marvel superhero film but I think most people would much prefer “X-Men” or “Spider-Man” to this.

In “Blade”, Wesley Snipes (“Passenger 57”, “Demolition Man”) stars as the titular vampire-killing anti-hero. Blade has a ton of fancy weapons at his disposal as he shoots, stabs and kicks his way through hordes of vampires in order to save the world when the vampires decide to try and fulfil an ancient prophecy. Unfortunately, the blood and guts you see throughout the film are the stand-ins for the story.

Blade is half-vampire and half-human enabling him to be exposed to garlic and sunlight but retain the strength and agility of vampires. He seems somewhat interesting and I suppose Wesley Snipes does an okay job but the script is so weak that you can’t really enjoy the character or the performance. Kris Kristofferson (“Payback”) plays Blade’s father figure and is alright. The villains are dull and are just there to be killed in the most brutal ways possible as we see them incinerated, decapitated and pretty much anything else you can think of.

There are lots of scenes with martial arts and a lot with techno music and it becomes quite dull because although some of the scenes seem somewhat entertaining, the focus always seems to be on the effects and the blood and not the actual fighting itself and that’s a real shame. I don’t see the attraction with “Blade” at all; I don’t see the attraction of seeing a film where we have endless scenes of vampire’s heads exploding. Don’t get me wrong, the film can be violent but “Blade” pitches it all wrong.