Running time: 114 minutes. Rated R (pervasive violence and profanity). At the 34th Street, the Kips Bay, the Union Square, others.
QUICK, get the garlic!
In "Blade: Trinity," Wesley Snipes re turns for the third go-round as the titular character, a half-human, half-vampire who has declared war on all other bloodsuckers.
Better he should have stayed in his coffin — or wherever he hangs out between screen outings.
This time, Blade — a short, heavily tattooed dude in a long black coat and wrap-around shades — is pitted against Dracula himself (Dominic Purcell), who has been roused from a long slumber in the Syrian desert by a band of vampires led by Danica Talos (one-time indie queen Parker Posey, who's terrible here).
Helped by fellow vampire slayers who call themselves the Nightstalkers, Blade takes on Dracula, who's now going by the name Drake, in a series of noisy, sickeningly violent set pieces.
As written and directed by David Goyer, who penned the first two "Blade" bloodlettings, "Trinity" lacks anything vaguely resembling a plot, while failing to deliver suspense or thrills.
Snipes doesn't act — he never delivers more than one simple sentence at a time — as much as pose and swagger. Thankfully, he's off-screen for extended periods.
If "Trinity" has a star, it's Ryan Reynolds as a wise-cracking Nightstalker who gives the movie badly needed humor. But he's too little, too late.
Jessica Biel, Natasha Lyonne and Eric Bogosian appear to little effect and Kris Kristofferson, as Blade's longtime human sidekick Whistler, is on-screen just long enough to collect a paycheck.
It's disturbing to note that the censors at the MPAA have seen fit to give "Trinity" an R rating despite nearly non-stop, sadistic mega-violence and profanity while handing out a more restrictive NC-17 to Pedro Almodovar's "Bad Education" for just a few discreet seconds of sex.
At times during a "Trinity" screening last week, there was more of interest happening off-screen than on, as surly anti-piracy rent-a-cops patrolled the aisles as if President Bush himself was in the audience. He wasn't.
Jessica Biel, playing a vampire-hunter, provides visual appeal.
BLADE: TRINITY
With Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds, Jessica Biel.
Director: David S. Goyer (1:45).
R: violence, language.
In the realm of derivative filmmaking, the double- lift - that is, a scene that steals from two other movies at once - is the equivalent of a pickpocket cleaning two victims at the same time.
So, a tip of the hat to writer-director David S. Goyer, who pulls off the feat in a scene from the familiar but surprisingly funny vampire thriller "Blade: Trinity" in which we enter a warehouse that has been turned into a human blood farm.
Owned and operated by vampires, the farm is filled with row upon row of hanging, brain-dead, bleeding humans (think of Michael Crichton's "Coma") encased in plastic sheaths that make them look like the developing pod replicants in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
A vampire host informs visitors that the blood donors for this and other converted warehouses around the country are homeless people collected from the streets and, thus, never missed.
All in all, the third film in the "Blade" series paints a life of relative plenty for the undead in the 21st century. And so it would be if not for the continuing harassment of Blade (Wesley Snipes), the half-human, half-vampire Marvel Comics hero who is tireless in his mission to destroy them.
In "Trinity," Blade - who is himself being pursued by police - teams with a tiny but earnest band of guerilla vampire-hunters who call themselves Nightstalkers.
"We would have called ourselves Care Bears, but that was already taken," says the band's ceaselessly wisecracking leader Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds).
From what we can tell from the "Blade" series, vampires are as easy to kill as ducks and there's no limit on them.
These fragile creatures die at the drop of a silver bullet or the flash of an ultraviolet light, and their deaths are downright festive. They light up like golden x-rays, then explode in a hail of sparks.
Why this movie wasn't given a July 4 opening is both a mystery and a missed opportunity.
To make things a little tougher for the heroes, Goyer - who's had a hand in writing all three "Blade" movies - awakens Drake (Dominic Purcell), the original, pre-Dracula, first-of-his-kind "Patriarch of All Humanus Nocturnus" from his centuries-long slumber in an Iraqi crypt.
I don't know if it was intentional, but Drake seems to come out of the same sandy hole in which our troops found the cowering Saddam Hussein.
He puts on a quite a show of menace. When not puffing up his chest like the Hulk, he's turning into a metallic monster whose mouth juts out in the shape of an inverted garbage disposal. If he gets to your neck, he's going to leave more than a mark.
For comic relief, Drake's toadies - led by vampire-from-hell Danica (Parker Posey, in the role she was born to play) - have a pet Pomeranian and two dobermans whose mouths do the same thing.
Inevitably, Blade and Drake will meet for the ultimate smackdown between good and evil, while their minions thrash it out on the undercard. If you don't know who to put your money on by now, I can't help you.
Actor Wesley Snipes allegedly made death threats to "Blade Trinity" director David Goyer because Snipes felt his action character had been sidelined to make room for two new ones.
The 42-year-old's co-stars, Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel, recently complained he had alienated himself from everyone working on the third installment of the vampire flick, by remaining in character for the entire duration of the shoot.
Movie insiders tell British magazine OK! that Snipes was so furious about his marginalized role, he made physical threats against Goyer.
An insider confides, "Wesley made death threats against David. David was scared for his life."
But a spokesperson for Goyer counters, "Wesley is a method actor. There's always a lot of tension on set."
I don't recall reading anything that said he remained Blade for the duration of filming of the first two movies...
Now for 3, which obviously sucked and Snipes was right to be upset over, he's now a method actor cause he was pissed from day one of shooting, straight til the end?
First off, Goyer shouldn't have directed. He's not a good director, and I hope the studios have made note of this. And Wesley's right that Blade's role shouldn't have been diminished greatly, because the TITLE CHARACTER is Blade, not the other two, whose names I don't remember, and who won't see another film like this together... Snipes SHOULD be pissed, and I support him all the way.
Snipes SHOULD be pissed, and I support him all the way.
You support him threatening to kill the Director?
I can undertstand him being angry, but to want to kill the director is a bit OTT. SNipes read the script before he agreed to do Blade 3 and he would've seen from the script that his part was less than the other movies. He could've said no, he didn't have to do the movie.
Well, I doubt he was serious about the threats, if there even was anything that was directly said. A lot of the time, especially in the fickle world of Hollywood, people are WAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYY too sensitive, and will exaggerate the slightest thing that bothers them, making a mountain out of a molehill.
I mean, which one was it? Was Snipes in character all the time, or was he angry SOMETIMES and said things to the director out of frustration and disrespect? I've told my siblings, "I'm gonna KILL you!!," a LOT of times, and they said the same to me. We never MEANT it and we were never afraid for our lives. But at times, when I wanted to get back at one of them, I'd go tell our parents that they threatened to kill me, and they'd get in trouble while I'd lay down on a scorer's table with my hands behind my head and smirk. (Indiana Pacers-Detroit Pistons brawl reference... )
I have a feeling that the supposed death threats were blown out of proportion and taken literally when they were never intended as anything serious.
If Snipes WAS serious (and who really IS serious when they say that in front of a studio full of production crew and cast members?), then I edit my support to no longer be "all the way".
Lets see. Way way better than the second one. But no where near as good as the first one.
They spent too much time on trying to bring in stupid ideas and answering them, like "Why doesn't the FBI catch Blade?"
And lets have The fish God Dagon really be "Dracula". Every time I heard that guy called Dracula, I cringed. And the dude spoke perfect English, knew about Bram Strokers book about him, etc.
He had been buried in Iraq for 5000 years or whatever. Please. The logic flaws were just insane.
The comedy relief fell flat *** flat for me. Didn't get into all the campy hip jokes about Saturday morning cartoons and vampire shop goths getting bit by Dracula.
The plot was pure hokey. Insert some germ into Dracula and kill him instantly. Hell, even bird flu takes some time to kill you. This stuff gets you sick and puts you down in about 5 seconds.
Many many moments, I wanted to turn the channel.
But underneath all that rubbish, there was a halfway decent movie. The fight scenes, while not on par with the first movie, were pretty decent. The weapons they had were aight.
The movie was not as bloody or gross as the second one. I don't really feel like seeing it again real soon, but I'm glad they made it, at least the series ended with a average movie. To end it with part two, which was worse than Alien 3 or Star Trek 5, would have been a mental let down.
From what we can tell from the "Blade" series, vampires are as easy to kill as ducks and there's no limit on them.
These fragile creatures die at the drop of a silver bullet or the flash of an ultraviolet light, and their deaths are downright festive. They light up like golden x-rays, then explode in a hail of sparks.
Why this movie wasn't given a July 4 opening is both a mystery and a missed opportunity.
I hear that. Blade took about 15 of them out on the staircase with that silver boomerang of his.
12-21-2004 09:35 PM
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