verybody knows the movies are full of s--t," Hannibal King (Reynolds) says, beginning the story of Blade the Vampire Hunter (Snipes) and his unlikely partnership with the Nightstalkers, a new breed of slayers, led by Abigail Whistler (Biel) and King.
It seems the vampires have become smarter. They can't beat Blade—in a car-vs.-motorcycle chase, he dusts dozens of them—so they've decided to embarrass him. Publicly. They set him up, having him execute a live human, then videotape it and send it to the media and to the FBI.
As the feds close in on Blade and Whistler's (Kris Kristofferson) waterfront hideout, Whistler manages to wipe most of the computer drives before blowing the entire place up. But Blade can't escape and is taken into custody. That's when he discovers who is really behind his downfall: Danica Talos (Posey), the sinister leader of a vampire coven, who is up to something diabolical. But before Talos can sink her teeth into the Daywalker, help arrives.
It's King and Abby. But Blade's not so sure he needs help. Back at their own waterfront hideout, he argues with them. They think he's past his prime; he tells them he works alone. But they've got a couple of surprises. Talos and her crew have discovered the Patient Zero of vampirism: Dracula himself (Dominic Purcell), now called Drake. And the vamps want to use Drake's genetic material to endow all vampires with the ability only Blade so far possesses: the ability to walk in daylight.
But the Nightstalkers have been working on their own surprise, with the help of a brainy geneticist (Natasha Lyonne): a virus that will kill all vampires. Blade, Abby and King just need to figure out how to survive long enough to use it.
A bloody mess
In Blade: Trinity, the third installment in the dark vampire franchise, Goyer—who wrote the previous two Blade films for other directors—finally gets his hands on the helm. Goyer has said he's thrown in a lot of stuff that was cut out of the previous two films, including a bang-up car chase in which Blade finally gets to redline his signature black Dodge Charger. The film also offers up an undiluted dose of Goyer's snarky adolescent humor, mainly in the person of Reynold's Hannibal King.
The results are mixed. On the good side, Goyer has created and brought to life two charismatic new characters: Biel's Abigail, who out-Buffys Buffy as a kick-ass new vampire slayer, and Reynold's King, a slice of beefcake with a side of ham. Biel's Abby, especially, gives new bite to the increasingly tired franchise, showing great athleticism in the action sequences, wielding snazzy new weapons and injecting a bit of skate-punk glamour into the proceedings. Goyer also takes a chance on indie darling Posey in the unlikely role of the vampire bitch queen Danica Talos and fellow indie actors Lyonne and John Michael Higgins in supporting roles, and their presence injects new lifeblood into this otherwise straight-ahead genre picture.
On the downside, Goyer has tried to put so much into the movie that it gets muddled pretty quickly. Conflicts and emotional arcs are set up and barely paid off, and the excellent action sequences displace Goyer's otherwise compelling character drama. Goyer also has so many characters that Purcell (late of Fox's John Doe) is hardly in the movie at all, though he's supposedly the ultimate Big Bad, and even Snipes feels more like a supporting player than the film's star.
Goyer also never met a joke he didn't like, and the movie's full of smart-alecky and occasionally mysogynistic ripostes, starting with King's smug voice-over, that quickly begin to irritate.
