My BloodRayne review

OK, let me get this out of the way at the beginning that I did sneak in a bottle of Jack Daniels into the theater. One does not go into a movie with the reviews BloodRayne received unprepared and without assistance. That said... I really enjoyed BloodRayne. Oh the holes the story are bigger than the hole in opne of the corpse's skull after a battle scene. But as a fan of the vampire genre, I've endured much worse movies. And when I say it's Uwe Boll's best movie yet, that might be seen as damning with the faintest of praise. So let me put it this way: BloodRayne had better vampire action than Blade II; had fewer script issues than Blade III; and had fiercer vampire attacks than Van Helsing. I confess my view might be colored by lowered expectations (not the whiskey). I had high hopes for Van Helsing because I really like both of the main actors, Kate Beckinsale and Hugh Jackman. And say what you will, I say Stephen Sommers made two great popcorn movies with The Mummy and The Mummy Returns so I really had high hopes for Van Helsing...wait, this is turning into another Van Helsing rant. Where was I? Oh right! BloodRayne. You can read tons of reviews about BloodRayne's flaws and I'll just say this: they're right. I mean, look at this cast: Ben Kingsley of Ghandi, Silas Marner, and Sexy Beast, Michelle Rodriguez of Girlfight, Billy Zane of a lot of movies where he seemed on the verge of breaking out into the big time. These are people who know how to act and could be in a great movie together. BloodRayne isn't that movie. Wait, I was just getting ready to praise it not damn it. When Rayne escapes from her cage and attacks her fellow circus performers, it's fierce and it's bloody and it's one of the best vampire-going-for-the-jugular scenes filmed. Notice I'm not talking about the plot? The plot's irrelevant in these things. We go to these things for the fangs and the blood. There's not enough of that. But the other stuff isn't all bad. Sure blood shoots like arterial spray from flesh wounds not close to arteries or veins while a slit throat oozes blood - go figure. And Rayne seems to get control of her blood lust rather quickly and when she has sex with one of her cohorts it doesn't seem nearly as dangerous as it should. But Boll isn't afraid of showing a lot of blood and gaping wounds and naked breasts. And that's a far sight more than Cursed which was done by Wes Craven. So I'll say this about Boll. He made a better film recently than Wes Craven. That's a sad indictment of Craven and surprise praise of Boll. I wouldn't recommend BloodRayne to anyone other than vampire lovers or fans of the video game (and I've never played the game so I don't know how it compares). But for vampire genre fans, we've seen worse.