Policeman to Blade – “You can keep doing your song and dance as long as you want, Blade – It’s not gonna play.†(Oh I do so love being able to use a quote from a movie to begin a review!)
Blade – Trinity is an unfortunate mishmash of film styles, genres, and clichés that ends up neither laughably bad (Catwoman) or simply boring (Elektra), but instead is just a garden variety piss poor action movie.
The idea here is that the vampires have decided they need Dracula’s blood for some reason or another. They find him hiding spider hole style in Iraq and talk him into killing their hybrid nemesis, Blade (Wesley Snipes).
First, the good guys: Snipes is OK, but you can sense that even he knows Blade is now more caricature than character. Jessica Biel (Abigail Whistler) is pedestrian, but adds a nice bit of babysitter next door meets Mia Hamm athletic sex appeal and a pointless slow motion shower scene. Ryan Reynolds (Hannibal King), while the least action-oriented, is probably my favorite of the trinity and occasionally lends a nice comedic touch.
Now the baddies: Dominic Purcell (Dracula) is boring from beginning to end and played the vampire patriarch with more of a 70’s open shirt macho than the metro vibe I think would have worked better (Goyer, gimme a call next time!). Parker Posey (Danica Talos), completely wasted as she continues to try to find her way in non-Guest vehicles, plays the pouty bitch-pire with fangs in her naughty bits. (Yes, you read that correctly.) You can tell she’s waiting to cash her check.
The film steals blatantly from a number of movies including The Matrix (‘come and get me’ hand wave close-up and general soundtrack timbre), Predator (Dracula’s jaw), and Alien (extra thing attacks from inside bad guy’s mouth). I was initially surprised it didn’t try to lift anything from AVP, but if you’ve seen AVP you’d know why.
There’s plenty of slow motion walking to rock music, meaningless multi-angle explosions and trite semi-ironic dialogue to keep your average Bruckheimer-ite remarking “Dude, that part where the guy blew up the thing was so freakin’ wicked!†for a good week or so, but not much else.
The DVD apparently has two discs, although after watching the first I think I’ll pass on the additional behind-the-scenes tripe. The movie disc has two commentaries, one of which I can only hope is the cast and crew chanting “we’re sorry†Gregorian style.
Blade – Trinity is just a shame. The franchise seems to have followed the Wachowski trilogy model and, in the end, bites the hands that feed it, and bleeds them dry.
(Note – For clarity’s sake, I reviewed the theatrical version on the DVD, not the extended version; a fact that I was later very pleased about.)