Review: Blade Trinity

"How can he say that with a straight face?" my wife asked me after Wesley Snipes delivers one of the many abysmal one-liners David Goyer cooked up for him. In addition to all the really bad one-liners Blade utters, there are nearly every action movie and vampire movie cliche in the book. I'm going to rate Blade:Trinity in a blow by blow fashion, giving and taking away points for the final rating. So far the movie's sitting at 9 (10 less the one point) for all of the really bad dialogue that everyone but Ryan Reynolds is forced to find a way to deliver.

Second demerit - crappy death scene for Kris Kristofferson as Blade's mentor, Whistler. Here's a character who's made it through the first two films in the series only to get blown up offscreen. The only reason I was 100% sure that he was dead was that Blade throws his head back and delivers a REALLY BAD cry of outrage, which Jessica Biel later imitates...more on that in a moment. Down to 8 points.

Third demerit - the title. If Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds were the only people Blade joined up following Whistler's death then, yes, it would be a trinity. But they aren't the only ones. They join up with a whole team of them. So instead of trying to be clever with the title by using 'trinity' to mark it as the third film, just call it Blade 3. Anything else, given that there isn't really a trinity until the last 30 minutes of the movie is pretentious.
Fourth demerit - Dracula looks like a steroid monkey. Or at the very least, a pro athlete who's no longer in the game. And they keep calling him "Drake" because apparently that's what he calls himself now. Maybe its just me, but if that "make up your own name" didn't work for Prince, why would it work for a vampire who's been called Dracula for over 100 years thanks to Bram Stoker's book? I just couldn't buy it. So, basically, I think the Big Bad sucked Big Time in this movie. Bad acting, Bad sword fighting, Bad look...and not at all scary. Just really big. Too big for Dracula in my mind. Or Drake. Or whatever the hell he calls himself.
Fifth demerit - All the cliches. Big ol' stack of them. Huge. Stack. Of. Cliches. Too many to list. Sadly, I found out that Goyer wrote the first two movies, so I'm really confused as to where this one went so terribly wrong. He was also involved in working on the screenplay for one of my favorite films of all time, Dark City. Maybe he did this one in his spare time. Or maybe he was busy working on the screenplay for "Batman Begins". I'm scared now. Scared to go see a comic book movie, because if this is the tripe that Goyer's chunking out now...oy. And I watched the "extended version" so you can't even claim that all the good parts ended up on the cutting room floor. So I'm going to go ahead and take away TWO points because apparently Goyer can do better.

So there's the final score. 6 demerits. The film gets to retain the rest of its points simply on the basis that the fight scenes are still cool, albeit laced with some of the crappiest CGI I've seen on the big screen. Some moments looked so much like a video game I was scrambling for the controls.

The only thing that makes this movie worth a rental is Ryan Reynolds as one of Blade's supposed "Trinity." He's great at delivery the wise-ass remarks and acts as comedy relief with all the aplomb one could given the rest of the script. He's good looking and well-built. This guy needs a good solid script, the kind of thing that "Speed" was for Keanu. I sure hope his agent can find him one; in the meantime, I'll check him out in Amityville and hope it doesn't stink as much as Blade: Trinity did.