Review
BLADE: TRINITY
Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson and Jessica Biel
Written and directed by David S. Goyer
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Blade: Trinity is the third chapter in the well-made Blade franchise. Day-walking vampire-hunter Blade (Wesley Snipes) and his grumpy handler Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) are back fighting vampires, but this time they’re not alone. Whistler’s daughter Abby (Jessica Beil) and smart-ass Hannibal King (an über-buff Ryan Reynolds) are along for the ride.
It’s one thing for Blade to wipe out vampires, but it’s quite another to kill a regular person. Things get sticky for Blade when he’s caught, on tape, mistaking a human for a bloodsucker. Now Blade is enemy No. 1 with both vamps and meat puppets alike. Throw in Dracula, a conspiracy about harvesting humans and a Pomeranian from hell and you’ve got a fairly satisfying third chapter. Somehow, though, it’s not quite good enough. And how could it be when writer-director David S. Goyer clearly wanted more. Why else would he have introduced (without follow-through or pay-off) things like Darwinism, vampiric corporate gentrification and Parker Posey?
Personally, I was hoping Posey would fall flat on her single-note ass. I wanted to say: "You’re out of your element, go back to the House Of Yes, " but I was wrong. As bloodsucker Danica Talos, Posey holds her own well, but sadly, she is shuffled to the rear as supporting bad girl. Instead of maximizing the positive, Blade: Trinity forces audiences to watch the insufferably boring Dominic Purcell as Drake, the most ancient of all vampires. The steroid-pumped Purcell has a stone-like screen presence and no acting chops. I guess Goyer thought that Snipes beating up a chick in the climax would be bad for Blade business. I personally think Poset would have kicked his ass.
As for the rest of the cast, Canadian Reynolds is actually quite charming. His role consists of beating up baddies and cracking really bad jokes. The hook here is that he gets busted other characters every time he delivers a quip turning his post-joke self-effacing commentary into comic gold. Biel is nothing more than ass-kicking eye candy and it’s just plain embarrassing to watch Natasha Lyonne’s blind scientist character struggle with her geek-speak exposition-laced dialogue.
Goyer has written all three Blade movies, but as director he seems a little out of his league. He understands the comic-book element on the page, but doesn’t really have the visual flair to realize it on the screen the way Guillermo del Toro did in the previous Blade effort. Goyer makes Trinity look more like a Road Warrior-Shaft hybrid than an R-rated Spider-Man, by giving it a gritty realistic style. While visually arresting and unique, it poses a problem when we are asked to buy into action and dialogue that are clearly meant to exist in a comic-book world. A nice attempt at something different, it just doesn’t quite succeed. |
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