BladeTrinity

Blade: Trinity (2004)

Blade is back and all hell is breaking loose! First, the vampires find the first of their kind, Dracula or Drake, buried in some ancient building in the middle of nowhere. They wake him up and he is grumpy. Second, Blade falls into a trap set by the vampires where he kills a human that is posing as a vampire and it is taped. The cops then find blade and Whistlers secret base of operations and swat teams swarm the place. Whistler is killed (again) and Blade is captured. Now Blade is stuck in a police station, drugged, held by familiars (humans who are vampire pawns) and his greatest ally is gone. Is all hope lost? H-h-hell no! It's still the beginning half of the movie! Enter the Night Stalkers, a ragtag group of vampire hunters that Whistler put together before his death that includes but is not limited too Whistler's illegitimate daughter Abigail (played by Jessica Biel) and Hannibal King (played by Ryan Reynolds). After they save him and bring him to their little hideout, Blade pretty much blows them off and shows only contempt for their efforts. He does however work with them for the rest movie to try to combat Drake and end the vampire threat once and for all with a virus that was engineered by Sommerfield, the resident Nightstalker techie.

Blade still has little personality in this flick and they make it worse by trying to have Wesley Snipes show a little emotion once or twice. I think I liked the character Blade even less in this movie than in the previous ones. On the other hand, the new Nightstalker characters that are introduced in this move more than make up for my misgivings about the main 'hero' Blade. Hannibal King is awesome and Ryan Reynolds does an excellent job playing the wisecracking ex-familiar turned vampire hunter. Jessica Biel likewise does great in her portrayal of Abigail Whistler. She can play a hard ass just as well as Snipes but she can actually show emotion too when the time comes for it! Some other good things about this movie were the nifty new weapons and gadgets that Blade and the others got to use in their fights against the vamps, some of the special effects (though they were a bit heavy on the CGI again) and the fact that they made a vampire Pomeranian. The most disturbing scene in this movie may be when the camera seems to focus in on Blade's boner during his rescue from the police headquarters, I'm not positive that's what they were going for, but it's what they got.

I know it's a movie about Blade, but if they had focused more on the Nightstalkers this would almost be a 4 out of 4 movie. As it is, I still like it a lot and think it is the best of the Blade series. My misgivings about Blade himself may be more because of how much I liked the new characters than how much I disliked him. It had all the strengths of the previous Blade movies and actually had some good guys you could cheer for! Got to give it a try.

3 ½ out of 4

reviewed by Scott Schwarzwalder