Wesley Snipes as Blade
Jessica Biel as Abigail Whistler
Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King
Parker Posey as Danica Talos
Dominic Purcell as Dracula/Drake
Triple H as Jarko Grimwood
Natasha Lyonne as Sommerfield
Kris Kristofferson as Abraham Whistler
Critique:
Blade (Wesley Snipes) is framed for murder by the Vampires (Parker Posey and Triple H) who have unearthed Dracula (Dominic Purcell) in a plan to take over the world. Blade must escape from the FBI and join up with the Nightstalkers, Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel), in order to finally defeat the Vampires forever.
The best thing about this film is Ryan Reynolds. He’s funny and charismatic; Hannibal King has an interesting story that Reynolds takes full advantage of. Every scene with him is interesting and fun to watch. His interrogation by the Vampires is one of the highlights of the film.
And that is about it. A movie starring Hannibal King and the Nightstalkers would have been far more interesting than Blade: Trinity is. That’s one of the major flaws of the film. Between setting up the villains and the Nightstalkers, there is very little Blade in it. Snipes knows this character very well by now, and does solid work, but he has so little do, it’s almost like he’s not in the movie at all.
What character development there is, is given to Jessica Biel. Unfortunately, most of it is so bland that it’s hard to ever care for her or her story. Worse, she gets saddled with one of the most ridiculously banal character traits ever – before going into battle she loads up her iPod with music that she likes to listen to while she fights.
The dialogue is often witty and funny, and the action scenes are well-staged and fun to watch – particularly the opening car chase and Blade’s escape from the FBI. Unfortunately, both are often pointless as well. Many scenes seem to be placed together completely arbitrarily and never seem to amount to anything.
The blame for this mess rests squarely on the shoulders of writer/director David S. Goyer. As a writer he has crafted an exceptionally improbable story with many scenes that don’t amount to anything and almost no character development, and as a director he has left his actors twisting in the wind, unable to salvage anything from the few moments they do get.
The villains in general are the least fleshed out of all. It’s difficult to tell who the real villain is or what they want. As a result, the final battle is anti-climatic. Parker Posey is particularly bad. Perhaps it is due to the large prosthetic teeth she has to wear, but much of her dialogue comes out both unintentionally funny and painful. Dominic Purcell’s Drake is a little better, but only a little. It’s never clear what it is he wants and his exceptionally purple dialogue is bland and annoying. He exists only as a plot mechanism (both sides need his blood in order to completely wipe out the other), and so that Blade will have someone to fight with at the end.
Writing has always been the worst part of the Blade films, but in the hands of other, more experienced directors, the weak points in Goyer’s writing were downplayed. With no one to do that this time, the major weaknesses of his writing (most notably his habit of explaining how things work, but not why anyone does them) are glaringly obvious.
Summary:
Fans of mindless action and good one-liners will enjoy Blade: Trinity; but anyone who was a fan of the first two films and expected more development of Blade or a grand finale to his story will be disappointed.
