Blade Trinity

Blade: Trinity (Director: David S. Goyer)

Director Goyer has been credited with the script of all three Blade films, and he served as producer on Guillermo Del Toro's Blade II. This is his second directorial film. Anyone ever heard of ZigZag? I sure hadn't until looking at this guy's work, but apparently Wesley Snipes is in that, too.

I don't know if I really have to mention that this film falls to every action convention in the book, and has scenes that don't make any sense other than to extend the movie. I think the surprise would be if it didn't do these things. Wesley Snipes takes on Blade for a third go-around, the brooding half-vampire, half-human who has dedicated his life to slicing and blasting vampires. Kris Kristofferson plays Whistler again, the Yoda of the franchise. Ryan Reynolds, who may be best known for his role in the not-terrible comedy Van Wilder, joins Snipes along with the luscious Jessica Biel. It almost goes without saying, with Snipes playing the no-charisma Blade and Biel playing the badass hot chick (who is Whistler's daughter of course), Reynolds steals the entire movie, although he nearly does his best to be an annoyance.

The story? Uuummm....well, see, there's this vampire, Drake (Dominic Purcell), who's like the head vampire, and he's been resurrected by a team of vampires led by one-of-the-guys Danica (Parker Posey). The goal is to frame Blade, get him out of the way via human cops (I know, I don't believe that either), bring in the ultimate vamp, and then let vampires rule the world. No real change in the story here; the vamps just trying to use humans to ultimately realize their goals of total domination. Meanwhile, there's a team of vampire killers set on helping Blade, the aforementioned Reynolds and Biel, plus Patton Oswalt and Natasha Lyonne who are in it for the science not the money.

The action is just...just...empty calories. Slick editing and impossible realizations by the heroes of where every bad guy lurks, and vampires just getting slaughtered. So much for immortality. Apparently killing a vampire is no different from killing you or me. You just gotta have skilz. Plus, Blade's big weapon, his sword, basically sits in its holster for most of the movie, it's handle forming what I thought was Blade's cool ponytail for a couple of scenes before realizing, hey--that's his sword! Blade prefers the blasting weapons here.

The first Blade (Directed by Stephen Norrington, which means all three Blades have different directors, which I believe sort of makes the inconsistency of the series understandable) had some fun in the opening, with the dance club and the blood shower, before sort of trickling down to mediocrity, then Blade II had some very good sequences for an overall good action/slasher film. The whole series is a mess. I can't imagine watching these in order and seeing any difference if I watched it in any other order. It must be real hard to make vampire movies good. The best one in the last twenty years is From Dusk Till Dawn, and even it isn't a good movie in the sense of true scares, it's just wacky fun, just like the second Blade.

I cannot recommend this movie to anyone, unless you really want to see Ryan Reynolds get absolutely tortured while spouting off hit-and-miss lines, and seeing a ton of video game characters get smoked.