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.
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.
posted by Brad @ 7:00 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home