Star: Wesley Snipes

Demolition Man (1993) – Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes and Sandra Bullock

This was a pretty good action movie in the 90s. It has an interesting core concept and some entertaining scenes. Some good action and some good humour. But the action does get a bit monotonous at times – some of the action scenes could do with condensing.

Sylvester Stallone plays the policeman, Sandra Bullock plays his partner on the force, and Wesley Snipes plays the outlaw they’re trying to apprehend. They all do a decent job but are working with a fairly mediocre script here, even though the core concept is quite creative. In fact it might not be creative at all – it might just be a sneak preview of what’s really on its way, since many of the strange futuristic concepts in this movie are already half way standardised in the real world today. Having said that, after a long, over-extended, thinly-spread monotonous action scene near the end, the very ending of this movie is actually quite a pleasant one as the friendly/draconian society returns to time more tolerable and everyone left alive gets along just fine with the saviour/dictator gone and his mercenary too.

Overall I rate it an (upper) OK movie, considering its quality & density of entertainment value for action movie fans.

Undisputed (2002) – Wesley Snipes

MARTIAL ARTS value	⭐⭐⭐⭐
ACTION value	⭐⭐⭐
PLOT value	⭐
CAST value	⭐⭐⭐

This is a movie about a prisoner played by Wesley Snipes, locked up for life after being an undefeated California state boxing champion, now a 10 year reigning prison champ, having an organised fight inside prison with the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, recently given a short sentence, played by Ving Rhames (the hacker from Mission Impossible). That’s it, two guys meet in prison and arrange to fight. That’s as far as the plot goes. The actual fight scene at the end is quite boring and dragged out for a good 20 minutes. If not for the very respectable cast members, this movie would not be worth watching, but Wesley is his usual self and mildly entertaining in this poor excuse for an action movie. Ving Rhames is average in his role. We’re also treated by a supporting role from Peter Falk (of Columbo) who does a good job, as well as Fisher Stevens (the bad guy from Hackers) who ain’t bad, and Michael Rooker (leader of the Ravager pirates who adopted Peter Quill in the Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy) who is pretty good here. So we’ve got a decent cast, working with a barely existent script. Sack the writer and the director. Give this team something serious to work on.

Blood Horror Swordsmen Vampires

Blade (1998) – Wesley Snipes

Wesley Snipes is a top-tier action movie hero when given the right movie to work on, as we saw earlier in his career with Demolition Man and Passenger 57; and this movie brings out the best of him. Undoubtedly inspiring the Matrix to some degree, which came out the year after, with agents instead of vampires dodging bullets, and a team instead of a single man against them. Wesley Snipes has less of a cool ‘hacker’ feel than Keanu Reeves, but more of a convincing martial artist vibe about him, so this movie is very close to the level of the Matrix in terms of acting performance and convincing execution of plot. Wesley Snipes makes a very convincing animalistic/vampiric human being – his moves are sharp and slick, helped very much by great camerawork but also largely thanks to Wesley’s real life martial arts background and his general on-point demeanour.

It’s a very combat oriented theme, with fists and blades and guns from start to finish. Adrenaline is pumping intermittently throughout. Cast wise, we have the odd strong character and a few less strong – this movie could easily benefit from an additional very strong cast member if the plot would allow.

Blade is a rare example of a ‘vampire horror’ that appeals to people who prefer non-gritty, fast-paced, martial-arts-packed action movies that thrill rather than scare. I don’t personally enjoy horror movies, but this one’s just about bearable as it’s more of an action thriller than anything, however, it becomes a bit more sickly when you realise how closely it resembles what really goes on in this world.

Like The Matrix, Blade also has a couple of sequels, which is inevitable considering how strong the original movie was; and like The Matrix, Blade’s sequels are not quite as good as the original but are still worth watching sequentially.