Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...

I think it’s safe to say that the BLADE films occupy a unique corner of the Marvel movie universe. For one thing, they firmly embrace the R-rating, filled with violence and gore and foul, foul language. Also, each film seems to adopt a totally different style, which is unusual when building a franchise. With X-MEN or SPIDER-MAN, you can see how carefully Marvel is establishing a sense of continuity. With the BLADE films, even though David Goyer’s been the primary screenwriter, there have been three different directors involved now, and that’s made every film feel very different. Steven Norrington created a great industrial vibe, very sleek, very cold. Guillermo Del Toro embraced a more gothic Grand Guignol style, emphasizing the horror more directly. This time out, Goyer’s directing from his own script, and the film he’s made is both funnier and more of a flat-out action film than either of the first two. What surprised me is that Goyer does a better job as a director than as a writer with this one, so he makes himself look better even when he manages to let himself down a bit.

The film kicks off with a team of vampires searching the desert. They find an ancient temple where something is buried, something they’ve been searching for. What they dig up is only seen in quick glimpses, something powerful and monstrous that kills several of them. It’s a damn good way to start the film, and it introduces Danica Talos (Parker Posey) as the queen bitch of this film. She’s such a strong personality, playing this spoiled, evil, decadent Paris-Hilton-with-fangs, that it seems like a miscalculation to reduce Dracula (or Drake, as the film calls him) to mere human form. When he’s resurrected, he’s pure monster, but then he quickly shapeshifts into human form and we end up with our 44,500th variation on “Eurotrash Dracula.” I wish Goyer had left Danica as the human face of the vampire world and let Drake exist as an evil that was larger than life. He’s a really cool monster, and we don’t get enough of him. I never saw the TV series JOHN DOE, but Dominic Purcell got some nice reviews for it. He doesn’t make much of an impression here, and that’s because he’s surrounded by so many outrageously outsized personalities. In addition to Posey, he’s playing opposite Triple H, the pro wrestler, who plays Grimwood, one of Danica’s main henchmen. Simply put, the guy’s got charisma to burn, and Goyer makes good use of him.

The same sort of imbalance exists among the good guys in the film. Kris Kristofferson is in and out of the film so fast he barely registers. Wesley Snipes can be, and has been, a very good actor when he is engaged by the right material. I still think of his work in THE WATERDANCE as a high point in his career. As an action star, Snipes has a particular gift: he strikes perfect comic book poses. He does most of his acting with his body, with the looks he gives people, with his presence. Unfortunately for him, this time out, Goyer has written two far more interesting roles for Jessica Biel and Ryan Reynolds as Abigail Whistler and Hannibal King, the Nightstalkers. They’re the B-team, so to speak, trained by Whistler and kept on the sidelines to step in if Blade should ever fuck up. And he does, pretty spectacularly, when the vampires set him up to kill a human in a public place. They videotape the incident and turn the FBI loose on Blade. It’s up to the Nightstalkers to step in, set Blade loose, and help him stop Drake from helping the vampires complete their endgame: turning all of humanity into livestock for the vampire nation.

I cannot say enough good about Biel and Reynolds. They are the reasons you must see the film. She is a credible action lead, gorgeous but not at all fragile. She handles herself with real poise and presence, and she carries the dramatic side of things. Reynolds, on the other hand, has the most fun job I can imagine. He gets to stand nose-to-nose with Blade and make savage fun of him for most of the film, and there’s not a thing Wesley can do about it but watch the guy steal the franchise out from under him. I would like to hire whoever it was who trained Reynolds physically for the film. They’ve taken this lanky Chevy Chase-style doofus and transformed him into Brad Pitt in FIGHT CLUB. The guy is impossibly chiseled in the film, and somehow, he still manages to come across as an ordinary guy with a sharper-than-average tongue.

As an action director, I like Goyer quite a bit. I had the opportunity to work with Goyer on a project just before he went off to start work on BLADE TRINITY. Never got off the ground, but we had a chance to spend a fair amount of time together, and I know he spends a lot of time working on story. That’s why I’m a little puzzled by this script. Maybe it was the fact that he was splitting his attention for the first time ever, but this feels undercooked. There are good ideas introduced and abandoned, set-ups that don’t quite pay off, and the entire notion of Drake as the real figure behind the legend of Dracula is barely explored. There are quite a few touches in the film that I think do work really well. The vampire dogs are hilarious, there’s a great scene in which Danica outlines a plan for Hannibal King (who’s been captured) that is quite chilling, even if it never comes to fruition, and the action scenes really do deliver a certain level of bone-crunching intensity that fans are going to enjoy. Patton Oswalt is introduced as a weapons expert for the Nightstalkers, and if I have any wish for the DVD, it’s that we get to see all the footage you just KNOW has got to be on the cutting room floor, since his part’s obviously been trimmed back. As much as I want to see more of him, I could have stood even less of Natasha Lyonne, the worst character and performance in the film. She’s some blind computer expert working for the Nightstalkers, and she looks like she was rounded up from a crack binge and shoved in front of the camera by an annoyed A.D. in every scene. She’s been an uninteresting performer for a while now, but she keeps getting thrown these plum roles. Perhaps it’s time to stop.

The end of the film feels oddly small-scaled, and that’s a bit of a problem. There’s something introduced that seems like it could be the end of the struggle between humans and vampires once and for all, but the way it’s actually handled onscreen, it’s unclear. Did it just affect one building? Will it spread? Did the plan work or fail completely? And the actual visual execution of the idea feels like a letdown. It’s not nearly apocalyptic enough. On the other hand, there are some great fights, and all the hand-to-hand stuff is really good. I think I would have preferred that it just feel more conclusive, one way or another. And I would have enjoyed seeing a final scene in which we establish what the Nightstalkers are going to do next. I know one was tested, and I think the film needs it. People are going to love Abby and Hannibal, and it’s a mistake not to end on them.

Overall, BLADE TRINITY is a bit of a mixed bag, but the good outweighs the bad considerably, and like the first two BLADE films, this one is fun. If you’re already a fan, buckle up, because this one should satisfy. And even if you’re not, give it a try, because it’s always nice to see not one but two new action stars emerge. Now I want to see Goyer move on to something of his own creation, something where he can really cut loose. I think he’s earned it with this one.

It’s been a busy weekend. I’ve published my reviews of ONG BAK, A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT, LAYER CAKE, THE INCREDIBLES, and THE POLAR EXPRESS so far. And there’s much more to come before the holiday. That LEMONY SNICKET preview, my reviews of HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, and the biggest installment of the DVD SHELF column ever!