7 out of 10
 

Forget your image of Boris Karloff creeping through the woods to bite pretty milk maids in rural Transylvania at the turn of the century. In this film, the present-day world is effectively controlled by a Vampire Mafia through a multi-million dollar web of organised crime, property portfolos and hi-tech companies. With everything under their control, they seem unassailable, until their empire is challenged by "Blade", played by Wesley Snipes, a half-Vampire with the same superhuman powers and strengths as them.

All goes well for "Blade" and his human sidekick, played by Kris Kristofferson, until one of the low level Vampires becomes impatient with the cloak-and-dagger existance and mounts a Mafia coup-d`état with the intent of wiping out mankind.

ALthough the slaughter makes "Saving Private Ryan" look tame, the intense violence here, really is a necessary part of the story. Yet, as any Shakespearian student knows, the provision of humour accentuates serious drama, and the fact that the script is entirely devoid of any form of lightheartedness is a sad loss to the drama. And whilst the film is an exciting one, the ending is poor and predictable and it does have obvious illogicalities to it, for instance, how is it that a nobody could takeover control of a several thousand year old Mafia so easily? And is it really so easy to kill a god?