The law of diminishing returns has caught up with the Blade series. The Marvel Comics-based franchise about a vampire-human hybrid who hunts down bloodsucking demons is on its third installment with Blade: Trinity, and writer David S. Goyer, who penned all three films and takes on directing chores with Trinity, seems to have run out of ideas. So much so that Trinity isn't even really about Blade (Wesley Snipes) as much as it is about the two new action heroes Goyer has created for it and is already pimping out for a spin-off.
They are Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel), the daughter of Blade's mentor Whistler (Kris Kristofferson, making only a brief appearance this time). When Blade gets caught by the cops in a sting set up by his vampire foes, King and Whistler come to his rescue, and the trio team up to stop the latest world-ending vampire plot, this one brought on by the return of Dracula (Dominic Purcell).
Playing the Dracula card is the supreme sign of laziness for any vampire story, but Trinity has more than its share of other problems. The famed first vampire isn't even interesting, as played by bland pretty boy Purcell, and indie queen Parker Posey is wasted as a secondary villain with a ridiculous haircut. The rest of the film is stuffed with generic action-movie clichés: things blowing up for no reason, confusing fight sequences, lame one-liners and blatant product placement. Snipes, who scowled and growled through the first two movies, doesn't vary his approach here, and Reynolds buffs up but retains his goofy frat-boy persona from Van Wilder.
Most importantly, the story has absolutely no sense of urgency, and serves no purpose other than to set up King and Whistler for their own film. King even narrates the movie, and Blade is often trivialized or pushed to the side in favor of emotional development (or what passes for it) for the other two characters.
The first two Blade films weren't any more intelligent, but at least original director Steven Norrington had a slick sense of style, and Mexican horror director Guillermo del Toro brought a sick feel for the macabre to his Blade II. Goyer is a completely artless and mechanical filmmaker, and his Trinity plays like little more than a second-rate TV pilot.