*** (out of ****)
Starring Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds, Parker Posey, Jessica Biel, Kris Kristofferson, John Michael Higgins, Natasha Lyonne, Triple H, and Dominic Purcell
Directed & written by David S. Goyer, based on characters created by Marv Wolfman and Gen Colan
2004
113 min R
If the players in “House of Flying Daggers” are prisoners of ideology, then the characters in “Blade Trinity” are prisoners of biology. If “Blade Trinity” seems colder and more cruel than its predecessors, that might be because it is thematically the most consummate of the series. The “Blade” films have always rejected the religious version of vampirism, instead going the route of pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo. The specific “biology” of the undead is a bunch of baloney, of course, but the Darwinian harshness of “Blade Trinity” is unsettling because it is not unlike what’s been happening on this planet for 4.5 billion years. The vampires in the “Blade” films are probably the most human in all the movies, yet neither Blade nor his human associates ever try reasoning with them. They never try negotiation or striking a bargain for peaceful coexistence, because it is not ideology or philosophy that divides us from them. Two species of large predators cannot share the exact same niche, and, like “Aliens” or the end of the first “Predator” film, the humans and the monsters simply must duke it out like wild animals to prove who is at the top of the food chain.
“Immortality” is used as a codeword throughout the movie; it’s not so much an individual that lives forever, but a species. It’s no accident that “Blade’s” Dracula uses the word “fit” to describe who will achieve immortality, calling to mind other expressions having to do with the “fittest.” When Dracula, the progenitor of all vampires, is summoned by his offspring to protect them, he is hesistant. Survival is like a chessgame: the better player always wins, or he’s not the better player, and he is unsure if vampires, humans, or a half-human, half-nosferatu hybrid like Blade is truly the fittest. Blade’s willingness to risk missions to protect the innocent, especially children, doesn’t so much seem like morality as it does the willingness of any higher mammal to die protecting its cubs. It’s also no accident that the movie’s psychiatrist and his dainty ideas are exposed as frauds, and no accident that when Dracula goads a hostage little girl and mocks her ideas of God and heaven, she replies that “my friends are going to kill you.” We’re all animals. We just happen to speak.
Anyway, “Blade Trinity” isn’t as good as the first two “Blade” pictures, but it’ll do. Each time I’ve gone to the theater with low expectations and each time I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The series has always thrived on the three “A”s: atmosphere, action, and absurdity (with a 99% straight face). These are the kinds of movies that are strengthened by gaping plot holes, not weakened. Blade lives in a comic book universe where Dracula can wake up from a thousand year nap knowing kung-fu and English. It’s a universe where we don’t get worked up watching recurring characters die, not because we don’t like them, but because they’ve already died before in a previous movie. It’s a universe where magic swords can be “half as a hot as the surface of the Sun” and instead of getting annoyed we grin (try getting away with something that patently silly in too-serious movies like “Underworld” or “The Matrix”). A guy who’s been kidnapped and beaten for 12 hours straight can, once freed, shake his head to “clear it,” and then go straight into the fighting. The movie begins with Blade (Wesley Snipes, delivering the occasional one-liner between clenched teeth) screaming down the freeway after a pack of the undead, leaving fried vampire chunks and thousands of dollars of wreckage in his wake. All he can do is look mildly amused as his wiper blades scrape vampire guts off his windshield.
The “plot,” such as it is, centers on a band of vamps (led by indie icon Parker Posey, in slapping-henchmen-when-I’m-angry mode) resurrecting, or summoning, or waking up the first of all vampires, Dracula (wrestler Dominic Purcell). One of the recurring joys of the “Blade” franchise is that each ends with Blade defeating the biggest, baddest, evilest of all vampires, and then each begins by saying that, no, there’s someone even worse. It’s only a matter of time before our laconic sword-swinger has to match his brawn with the devil himself, or perhaps the planet Saturn.
Anyway, since the vampires secretly run the human world, they frame Blade for 1,182 murders and Our Hero reluctantly turns to a group of human vampire hunters for help. Chases, kidnappings, rescues, and moves straight out of the WWF ensue. Yes, every movie nowadays has kung-fu, but only “Blade” has the temerity to use body slams. I still can’t get over the fight at the end of “Blade II,” where the previous Most Evil Vampire Ever jumped into the air and came down on Blade with his elbow.
Page two of "Blade Trinity." Back to home.