Mondo Review - Blade Trinity

Saw Blade: Trinity last night with Izzy since Laura was all tuckered out after dealing with hell-spawn teenagers all day. I really enjoyed the first Blade, which was the first of a great line of subsequent Marvel-based movies. Blade II, while a good movie in its own right, went with a darker, more gothic look that I didn't really enjoy, and I thought the premise was a little silly (reapers eating vampires like vamps eat people).

I went into Blade: Trinity with low expectations, wanting merely a movie that would have some good action, some humor, and a decent plotline. While I thought the movie was okay, I think it just barely delivered on the above.

Basically, without getting into spoilers, Blade joins a group of new vampire hunters called "night-stalkers" to defeat a new enemy while on the run from the law.

This time out, the man who wrote the first two Blade movies comes to the director's chair for the first time, and he does a decent job. Nothing extraordinary, it's basically your typical Bruckheimer film. The style is a bit of the first and second movie melded together, at times very clean, other times gritty and shaky. I hated the times when the camera jumps around real fast to quick jump shots of one character then the other (I call it the Bay effect), as it sometimes made things a little confusing. It's a trend in action movies lately and I guess I just have to get used to it.

I won't give any spoilers for the story, but overall I was underwhelmed. The main villain is laughable. He's set up as this major badass in the beginning, then half-way through the film ends up running from Blade, just to sword-fight him in the end. Very lame. The other bad guys are pretty weak here too, with no good explanations as to why this group of vamps is important (are they the leading clan, or just the one' s to discover the new bad guy, or what?). The ending is also a let-down, with no satisfying resolutions, just a lingering "to be continued" vibe that hangs in the air while the many plotholes opened up throughout the movie are never resolved.

The acting was decent on the hero side. Wesley Snipes has Blade down by now, which is to say he can pose with a sword well and grunt out things while looking cool. Ryan Reynolds (AKA Van Wilder) provides some comic relief as Blade's wise-cracking foil, but just manages to be a little more irritating than funny. Jessica Biel does her job, looking hot while performing maneuvers and knocking out 200+ lbs bad guys with her 90 lbs frame.

One funny thing we both noticed is that Goyer has a hard-on for the iPod. It's featured in several close-ups, there's dialogue and shots of Jessica making her playlists, and she dons her ear-buds before every battle because it's said "she likes to fight to her own background music". Now, I love my iPod, but even I thought this was gratuitous and just came out plain silly.

Overall, I give Blade: Trinity a C+.