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Having battled vampires who were devising a way to walk in daylight and a strain of supervampires in the first two films, it was perhaps inevitable that “Blade: Trinity” would find our hero battling the ultimate vampire, Dracula. However, the filmmakers apparently decided that the name “Dracula” would have no meaning for today’s hip, happening kids (and after “Van Helsing”, they may have a point) and so we discover that the real name for the most terrifying vampire of all-indeed, the very first vampire from which all future bloodsuckers sprang from-is...Drake. (I guess that when Bram Stoker wrote his “fable”, as the film describes it, he had some anti-duck agenda.) Anyway, Drake (Dominic Purcell) has been slumbering in the deserts of Iraq (subtle) for centuries until a group of nouveau vamps, led by the far-more-vampirey-sounding Danica Talos (Parker Posey...yes, Parker Posey), revive and free him. It seems that they have a plan for their kind to finally take over the world from mortal man and require his help to seal the deal.

Of course, the vampires in the previous films had similar plans before they went down in defeat and so Danica realizes that Blade needs to be taken care of beforehand. Her brilliant plan is to frame him for the killing of a human being (luckily, she is able to find one willing and eager to take one for the team) and have him get arrested by the FBI. Amazingly, this plan actually works and Blade, the same guy who has dusted (literally) 1182 vampires, by his count, gets taken down by the cops in a standoff that also results in the death of longtime aide Whistler (Kris Kristofferson)-a moment that might have had a little more poignancy if he hadn’t already been killed before in at least one of the previous installments.

Luckily for mankind, he is immediately rescued by a band of hunky young vampire slayers, led by smartass Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and hottie Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel), both of whom have deeply personal reasons for wanting to rid the world of vampires. Hannibal was once turned into a vampire himself, courtesy of Danica while Abigail is the long-lost daughter of Whistler who has taken up the family business, even though we had been assured that his entire family had been butchered by vampires long ago. (Apparently in the world of “Blade: Trinity”, continuity is just a word for nothing left to lose.) Eventually, it transpires that the slayers have devised a virus that, if properly unleashed, will kill off all vampires once and for all. (And no, the notion of developing a disease to wipe out an entire subculture instantly raises not an ironic eyebrow from anyone.) Why they need Blade to help them is never adequately explained and so the character spends much of the film standing around almost as an afterthought. In normal circumstance-as in a movie where you actually were interested in the hero and cared about what he did-this would seem like a grave miscalculation; in the case of the resolutely uninteresting Blade (and the equally dull performance by Snipes), his absence comes almost as a relief.

This is a typical plot for a contemporary action film-at once wildly convoluted and strangely threadbare-and after about 30 minutes, the film pretty much dispenses with any remaining vestiges of it. Instead, it devolves into another series of endless action scenes that are so sloppily constructed-there is never a moment when you can tell where anyone is in relation to anyone else-and gracelessly augmented by obvious CGI-effects that they begin to resemble nothing more than the cut scenes found on the less popular video games. Perhaps I may have been spoiled a bit because I happened to see “House of Flying Daggers”-a martial-arts film that depicts its battles with uncommon grace and beauty as well as jaw-dropping thrills-just before “Blade: Trinity” and was able to see what a fight scene should look like. Then again, it may just be that first-time director David Goyer has no particular skills for directing such scenes; he seems more intent on sticking iPod plugs into the fight scenes (done in a way that makes you yearn for the quiet dignity of the product placement in the James Bond movies) than in giving them any sort of genuine excitement.

Another problem that I have with this film-with all of the “Blade” films, in fact-is that I can never figure out exactly where the humans fit into all of this. We keep hearing that the vampires require human assistance to do some of their dirty work-mostly light paperwork and picking up the cleaning-because they cannot survive in sunlight. However, it seems as if half the vamps we encounter are walking around in broad daylight without any problems. Besides, what exactly are those humans getting out of this Faustian bargain on their end? After all, they aren’t immortal, they don’t get any of the cool vampire powers and inevitably wind up getting killed by either the vampires or the vampire hunters for their troubles. Sure, the vampire babes are 37% cuter than those found during your typical happy hour at Applebee’s, but even that doesn’t quite explain their instant desire to sacrifice both themselves and humanity at the whim of a bunch of surly Eurotrash. (I am sure that there is some “Blade” fanatic out there ready to explain their reasons to me in astonishing detail and I would like to gently suggest that they restrain themselves for the good of us all.)

What does work, to a degree, is the self-mocking attitude that the film has regarding itself. Perhaps finally realizing just how ridiculous the entire “Blade” saga is, Goyer has come up with, in the form of the Hannibal King character, a method of pointing out the silliness of the proceedings; every time Blade says something oh-so-tough, King is right there to deflate him with some bit of snark (and his comments about former flame Danica are both hilarious and unprintable). This goes beyond the quips familiar to fans of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”; this feels more like “Fletch the Vampire Slayer”. Even this wears out its welcome towards the end and I am sure that this approach will horrify “Blade” purists but I found it to be an entertaining diversion in the middle of a film that was theoretically supposed to be an entertaining diversion itself. (There is also a gag about the results of breeding domestic animals with vampiric tendencies that should amuse all but the most humorless PETA workers.)

The idea that doesn’t work in the film is the notion of having indie-film Parker Posey playing one of the chief vampires. Posey is a wonderful comedic actress who can wring humor out of just about anything (remember the elevator scene in the otherwise hideous “You’ve Got Mail”?) but she has been saddled with a part that never really takes advantage of her unique gifts; as written, this is a part that could have been played by any glassy-eyed “Maxim” cover girl and the gulf between the blandly outlandish villainy of the script and her oddball take on it (at times it feels as if she is channeling her bad-gal performance in the underrated “Josie and the Pussycats”) quickly grows too wide to be interesting. However, the notion of Posey playing a vampire is still an intriguing one-I can already picture her wandering the Upper East Side bemoaning the lack of true blue-bloods in a variation on Abel Ferrara’s “The Addiction”.

Although fairly expensive to produce, “Blade: Trinity” is on the level of one of those made-for-video sequels that have a familiar title going for it and not much else. This can be depressing when the original film was something fresh and exciting (as anyone who has ever sat through one of the “Howling” sequels can attest) but it is pretty much unspeakable when the original wasn’t much of anything to begin with. The “Blade” films have pretty much run their course and even though the finale leaves the door open for another film, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to continue the series in its current form. After all, when the actors on-screen look as bored as the viewers in the audience, that is the time to call it quits for good.

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originally posted: 12/08/04 16:06:13
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