An Overbite Problem...

A Review of Blade: Trinity

So I saw Blade: Trinity, the third and presumably final Blade film on Wednesday night. It's not particularly good, but it's an interesting kind of bad film. It's a strange mix of influences and genres, and of good moments with nothing in between. It's a disappointing directorial effort for a good screen writer who, paradoxically, manages to let himself down with his writing more than his direction.

David Goyer, who wrote both the original Blade and it's sequel, Blade 2, returns for this film and also sits in the director's chair. The story, unfortunately, feels like a reworking of notes that didn't get used for the first two Blade films, with ideas being revisited (Vampire run "blood banks"), and not much real narrative drive. Things keep happening to the characters, but it all seems remote and by the numbers.

Goyer's direction may be slightly better than his script this time out, but it's still spotty. Several scenes just have an awkward rhythm to them, including a few action scenes. One scene introduces a character by having him appear through a broken window after throwing a vampire through the window. The timing and composition of the shots in the scene just feel off, and a sight gag which should be quite funny feels forced by the extreme closeup used to sell it. Another action sequence, with Blade pursuing one of the villains of the piece, Drake, in a chase through buildings and rooftops, feels like an attempt at homage to the gritty films of the seventies like The French Connection. It doesn't work, however, because the tempo of the edits and the specific shots just don't flow with the organic structure that a Friedkin or Frankenheimer tended to impart.

Also not helping the film is the continuing cartoon-ification of Wesley Snipes' Blade, who is just a little too unreal to ground the films in real drama, or even real melodrama. Both Stephen Norrington and Guillermo DelToro worked with that pretty well in their films, but there isn't much of a dramatic arc that Blade goes through in this film. There is one theoretically, but it doesn't really show up much on screen because Snipes treats everything with the subtlety of a jackhammer.

Some of the supporting cast fare better. Jessica Biel manages herself well in the film, keeping a serious tone throughout the over the top vampire killing. Ryan Reynolds, as Hannibal King, manages to basically steal the movie as a former vampire who just can't stop talking. Even if the film tanks he's probably managed to expand his career with this film as he sets himself up well to get offered LOTS of action comedy roles. Former indie-queen Parker Posey brings some quirk to her role as a Vampire ringleader, playing an emotionally stunted nerd who self consciously struts...A lot.

More problematic is Dominic Purcell, TV's John Doe, as "Drake". I feel kind of bad for the guy, because he reminds me of the worst of William Shatner, in that every line he delivers feels like it was written. He seems incapable of making dialogue sound natural and spontaneous, whether here or on John Doe.

Overall, Blade Trinity is a disappointment, but it's entertaining enough that it's worth a rental in the future for horror or comic-book fans. The film, appropriately enough, feels like an ongoing comic that's just run out of steam and needs to be cancelled, with a few good ideas surrounded by too much filler.

Technical Difficulties

Computer problems, along with being a little under the weather, prevented me from posting the last few days. Regular posting should resume tonight and should go daily starting next weekend. I should have some thoughts on Maus and the Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban film.

The Devil You Knew...

Daredevil: Director's Cut Review (DVD Release)

Daredevil was a problematic film for a variety of reasons. Drawing inspiration from one of the richer corners of super-hero comics (Frank Miller's Daredevil books from the early eighties), the original theatrical cut release was mired by narrative confusion. It seemed to be a "greatest hits" style adaptation of the peak of the daredevil series, without the visceral impact or dark emotional weight that Miller's early comics had. Lacking sharp dialogue or engaging action scenes, the film was a disappointment.

Daredevil: The Director's Cut helps rectify that...

...at least a little.

This new version of Daredevil feels like a fuller movie, with a plot that actually steps logically from A to B, and a little bit stronger focus on the Matt Murdock/Daredevil character. A missing subplot involving a man framed for murder is restored in it's entirety to the film, and it helps make sense of one of the wierder leaps the film takes in it's final act. It also helps keep the focus, in a larger sense, on Matt Murdock and why he does what he does.

The character of Elektra loses a couple of minutes of time in the cut, as a love scene is excised out and a couple of conversations seem to have been trimmed. She's still an important character in the film, but the original film felt like it should have been titled "Daredevil & Elektra" and this film feels more like "Daredevil."

Another key change in the film, that certainly helps the tone, is a reworking of the editing of the films fight scenes. Particularly the first and final battles in the film. The action choreography is somewhat clearer and subtlely more violent, as you get more of the full impact of many of the punches and kicks thrown. It seems kind of silly that this was the difference between a PG-13 and an R, but I guess that's today's MPAA.

Overall, the Director's Cut is an improvement on the original film, adding a little more drama, logic, and humor into the mix. It's still not an exceptionally good film. The film continues to be weighed down with dry dialogue and a bit of a by-the-numbers approach to storytelling. To anyone who had a mixed response to the initial release of this film, however, this is a DVD well worth checking out.

Notes on the DVD: Picture and Sound were both very good, seeming to match the quality of the theatrical cut disc, which, whatever the merits of the film, was wonderfully transferred to DVD. DTS and Dolby Digital English tracks are available. On the extras side, this is a one-disc release, but we get a commentary with Director Mark Steven Johnson & producer Avi Arad. Also included is a brief featurette explaining the reasoning behind the theatrical cut and why the director made the specific inclusions and exclusions of scenes in this cut.

Welcome to MorsecodePop!

Thanks for stopping by this new blog, a spinoff of my "Morsecode" blog. I've created this so I've got a separate venue to handle discussions of things like Film, Music, Comics, and other pursuits, while the original "Morsecode" blog will be focused on news, politics, world events, and other serious stuff.

So what's up in the near future for MorsecodePop? We'll have some DVD reviews over the first week, as well as some thoughts on some recent comic relaunches to come out of Marvel comics. On the books side, expect some posts in the next week or two regarding William Gibson's Pattern Recognition & Art Spiegelman's Maus.

Another thing that we may do is some TV blogging, along with some TV-on-DVD reviews. I'll be picking some shows to do some macro analysis on, as well as some episode by episode reviews.

As for post frequency, we're shooting for at least one post per day. Topics covered will frequenly lean to the geeky realm because, well, everyone who could be posting to this blog is at least a little bit of a geek.

Thanks for visiting, and please come back soon...