BLADE: TRINITY: Sounds Like Rejects from a Saturday Morning Cartoon

Blade: Trinity (2004) – Directed by David S. Goyer – Starring Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Jessica Biel, Ryan Reynolds, Parker Posey, Dominic Purcell, Triple H, Callum Keith Rennie, Natasha Lyonne, John Michael Higgins, Patton Oswalt, James Remar, and Eric Bogosian.

BLADE: TRINITY is not the fall from the mountaintop that Spider-Man 3 represents, but it is a definite step down in quality from the first two movies in the vampire-hunting franchise.

The main problem with TRINITY is that it moves BLADE firmly into superhero territory; watching this film is like watching a comic book company try to save an under-selling book by tossing in a bunch of guest stars and trying to make the book look more like everything else in the company line. It just doesn’t work; if anything, TRINITY feels like it should be the fourth movie in the series (not that there is a fourth movie in the series) and in the early stages of the film I feel like I’ve missed a story. The BLADE franchise, then, is like picking up a few old back issues of a now defunct comic, maybe from one of those awesome East Coast Comics ads that used to run in Marvel books all the time, and digging issues 18 through 25, but then being mostly confused by issue 64.

Things progress too quick here, and there’s an acute sense of David S. Goyer (who wrote all the BLADE movies and directs TRINITY) jumping too far ahead in his overall story. Before you’ve even settled into your seat, we’ve got some vampires digging up Dracula and Whistler being killed, and then Blade is hanging out with Patton Oswalt. It just moves too fast and too unconvincingly.

Danica Talos (Parker Posey) leads a group of vampires to look for Dracula in the-

I just can’t go on without saying how much I hate Parker Posey in this movie. She’s not an actress that does a whole lot for me even on her good days (mostly in the Christopher Guest films), but she’s intolerable here. Talos’ vibe is all “I’m better than you because I’m a bitch who doesn’t care,” and Posey does little to convince me she’s not on total cruise control in this movie. It’s not all Posey’s fault, of course, because she seems to deliver exactly what Goyer wants out of Talos, but whether the fault likes more with Goyer or Posey, I can’t stand the scenes with her in them.

The problems for Blade (Wesley Snipes) and Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) start when Blade kills a human familiar of the vampires. This comes to the attention of the FBI, who lead a raid on Blade and Whistler’s HQ which ends with the mechanic/father figure dying for good this time. The FBI captures and interrogates Blade, but the two chief interrogators interview Blade like they learned their cop techniques from watching reruns of bad cop movies.

It’s awful stuff, and we’re saved from seeing even more of it (or John Michael Higgins’ phony psych exam) by the arrival of Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Abigail Whistler (Jessica Biel). There’s a decent fight scene during their escape but it’s just that – decent and nothing more.

Another area where TRINITY fails is that this movie feels more like THE NIGHTSTALKERS AND BLADE rather than BLADE AND THE NIGHTSTALKERS. The movie asks Reynolds’ charisma to carry much of the film, and while Reynolds’ is fine in that role, the film has him go overboard a bit too much. King’s outward loudness is balanced by Whistler’s inner calm, and perhaps if the film were simply theirs instead of having to include Blade, it might have worked better. As it is, however, we’ve got Blade competing for screen time with King and Whistler; as a result, where the previous two films were able to blend a variety of genres into an effective movie, TRINITY’s varying parts never coalesce.

There’s other Nightstalkers, too, but they’re here just to die.

The Nightstalkers-featuring-Blade want to stop Dracula (Dominic Purcell) and blah blah blah …

I mean, there’s nothing here unique or surprising or barely engaging. Everything is either a step down in comparison to previous films or a step sideways, and all of it is confusing. There’s really not much more to say about TRINITY. It’s not the worst film ever made, but it’s a step back from the first two films. It’s a much more straightforward superhero action movie but it’s not as enjoyable. In making the movie function more like a traditional superhero story, Goyer has robbed Blade of what makes him unique.

TOTAL RECALL (2012): I Give Good Wife

Total Recall (2012) – Directed by Len Wiseman – Starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston, Bokeem Woodbine, John Cho, and Bill Nighy.

Are you new here – then be aware, SPOILERS LIE AHEAD. LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS, so if you don’t want the movie SPOILED, stop reading.

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Len Wiseman’s TOTAL RECALL is one of those films that just sort of exists.

It is not a bad movie, but it is not a great movie, either, and the result is a film that’s technically proficient without ever being spectacularly memorable. Wiseman directs a decent action sequence, but RECALL is a joyless chase film that’s mildly entertaining without being the least bit engaging.

I feel a bit bad bagging on a film like TOTAL RECALL because I paid my money, ate my popcorn, and for the most part enjoyed what I was watching. There’s a few times when the film lags, but I was largely impressed with how the film looked and moved. I just wanted more. I wanted to be drawn into this world and drawn into this story and these characters and I just wasn’t. The narrative is very robotic and predictable, and not predictable because this is a remake of the original TOTAL RECALL, but predictable because I’ve seen action movies before.

I wish Wiseman would get handed a great script because I think he could deliver a really great action film, but all of his previous action films are really just okay and nothing more. Technically, they’re fine, but emotionally, they’re flat.

One big problem with this movie is that, much like the original RECALL, the narrative wants the audience to be thinking, “Is what I’m watching real, or is it all a Rekall fantasy?” and just like the original RECALL the answer is obvious moments after Douglas Quaid (Colin Farrell here, Arnold Schwarzenegger in the original) sits in the chair and gets his injection. In the original, Quaid gets a scratch on his neck that disappears once the injection goes wrong, and here Quaid gets a stamp put on his arm that disappears just as fast.

How fast? We see the stamp, the injection goes wrong, a bunch of officers show up with guns, Quaid puts his arms up behind his head and … no stamp.

Making it completely obvious right up front does take a bit away from the rest of the movie. It’s not enough to ruin it – I can still watch The Wizard of Oz and The Usual Suspects after learning at the end of those films that most of what we’ve just seen is a made up story inside the story – but it does make all of the “stop the action so we can debate the authenticity of this experience” moments a bit tedious. Paul Verhoeven had the decency to make his movie fun, but Wiseman has no desire to include humor. There’s literally only one moment in the whole film where I chuckled. It’s in the middle of one of the 857 big action sequences and Quaid and Melina (Jessica Biel) have just dropped into an elevator.

“Is this going down?” Quaid asks of the stunned riders.

One chuckle.

One.

I’m not going to spend much time discussing the differences between the Wiseman and Verhoeven films because the amount of fun generated in both films is the biggest difference. Let’s focus on the Wiseman film:

Doug Quaid lives in Australia (The Colony) and works in a factory in England (The United Federation of Britain). The rest of the world is a poisoned wasteland. How does Quaid get to work every day? Via the Fall, a big, honking gravity elevator that cuts through the planet. Doug has dreams about running away from cops with Jessica Biel. (Fittingly, these dreams are nightmares.) Doug is married to Lori (Kate Beckinsale), who tries to convince him that he should be happy. Even though their life together hasn’t turned out exactly as they dreamed, she’s still the most gorgeous woman on the planet and that has to count for something, right? (Note – that may not be exactly what she said, but that’s what I heard.) I’m not sure why it makes sense for Doug to visit Rekall and have fake memories implanted in his head when he’s having nightmares, except that these dreams leave him with the feeling that he should be doing something more with his life.

His work pal Harry (Bokeem Woodbine) plays the class card and wants to know if Doug thinks being a factory worker is something to be ashamed of, and Doug says No (though he means Yes), and then goes and visits Rekall, where John Cho implants the spy program in his body. Then everything goes “wrong,” meaning that Doug gets the exact experience he’s paying for, but he doesn’t have any fun because he decided to be a double spy instead of being a guy married to Kate Beckinsale.

Once things start to go bad, TOTALL RECALL simply becomes a lesser version of The Bourne Identity. Doug is on the run, trying to figure out what’s going on and who he really is, and he teams up with one woman as the government chases him. It’s not as skillfully made as Bourne is, and there’s a real herky-jerky quality to the film: everybody hurries up to do a bunch of shooting and running, then the narrative stops so Doug can find something that advances the plot, then everyone hurries back to the running and shooting.

After things go wrong at Rekall and Doug returns home, Lori decides it’s time to attack him and bring him in. So they fight. And fight. And run. And fight. And jump. And shoot. And fight. It’s a very good action sequence, first in their apartment and then through the rooftop streets of the Colony. (The Colony and UFB are elevated regions, so there’s multiple layers to the city’s layout.) I do feel it goes on a bit too long – in an action sequence you should never be wondering, “When is this going to end?” – but it’s good stuff.

None of the actors here have an abundance of personality and that hurts the film, too. Farrell, Beckinsale, and Biel are all good, but they don’t move me. I’m never on Doug’s side here. I’m not rooting for him. And not just because I’m rooting for Beckinsale, either, but because I just don’t care about Doug’s plight. One, I know that within the confines to the story his experience is a fake, and two, he’s a nice guy but not a compelling guy. Farrell has a sense of humor and I would have liked to see more of that put into the film.

And by “more,” I mean, “any.”

The best chemistry in the film comes between Beckinsale and Biel, and I wish we would have gotten more with the two of them going at it instead of Doug serving as the meddling third wheel. Farrell is a much better actor than Schwarzenegger, but he’s not a more fun actor to watch, and the script here doesn’t take advantage of Farrell’s talents. I think RECALL perhaps reveals why it will be so hard to reboot Scwarzenneger’s films – the man might not be a good actor, but he’s a huge personality. It’s tough to find actors who can shine that brightly

RECALL isn’t a very deep film. There’s a decent backdrop of politics, with the rich UFB government manipulating a war against the poor Colony workforce, but it’s all handled with the skill of a butcher using a chainsaw. There’s a good visual look to the cities, and plenty of well-executed action sequences (especially the magnetic car chase). All the actors do what they can with the roles they’ve been given, but the roles are all rather simple.

TOTAL RECALL can never escape that sense that it’s just a poor copy of other films and stories.

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And if you like good sci-fi action stories with strong female leads, please check out my 2011 novel,HARPSICHORD AND THE WORMHOLE WITCHES.

Harpsichord & the Wormhole Witches. The First Novel of the Deep. Now Available at Amazon.com in Paperback. From Atomic Anxiety Press.

THE A-TEAM: This is What Two-Dimensional Popcorn Tastes Like

THE A-TEAM (2010) – Directed by Joe Carnahan – Starring Liam Neeson, Bradley Cooper, Quinton Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Jessica Biel, Patrick Wilson, and Brian Bloom.

I almost called this review, “This Movie Exists” because I actually watched the movie last week and have been too busy finishing the next chapter of my dissertation, finishing a short story for a collection, working, and writing a host of STAR TREK and DOCTOR WHO reviews to finish this review. When I was toasting up an English muffin and thinking about what I wanted to write, all that readily came to mind was:

1. The van got wrecked.
2. Hannibal grunted. Face smirked. B.A. growled. Murdock is crazy.
3. Jessica Biel = getting too thin?
4. Good use of the original theme song.

That’s it. And I enjoyed the movie. I really did. I sat down and watched it and enjoyed it and a week later I struggled to be able to articulate why it actually all worked because nothing memorable came immediately to mind.

Good thing I’d already written some of what follows …

Let me repeat my rule about reviewing movies like this: I don’t care how the movie compares to the TV show. It’s not that I find that angle dumb, it’s just that I’m not interested in judging the success of a movie based on how closely it resembles its source material. I’ve got the TV show for that. I think it’s interesting to bring up comparisons but it’s not like Spider-Man was ruined for me because Peter Parker could suddenly shoot webs out of his wrists. It doesn’t help make the character any more interesting but it doesn’t ruin the movie. Judging a movie simply by how it does or does not conform to the source material just ain’t my scene. No matter how bad a movie is, it’s not going to alter the source material.

I found Joe Carnahan’s THE A-TEAM movie to be a surprisingly enjoyable military/western/crime movie. It’s movies like A-TEAM for which the phrase “cinematic popcorn” was coined. It’s a big, loud, silly movie that delivers plenty of action and plenty of smiles. Purposely slick and perhaps a bit too concerned with having a cool visual look, Carnahan has created an adult, testosterone-fueled Little Rascals flick. A-TEAM is all about big guns and revenge and blowing things up. It’s taking the backyard, treehouse plan and putting it in play with real tanks instead of toy tanks. Girls need not apply.

There is one girl in the movie and Face wuuuuuuuuvs her, but A-TEAM isn’t some male power fantasy where the woman are big-boobed and subservient. Women just aren’t that important to these guys. They’re soldiers, doing their soldiering in a male-dominated world where the majority of women they’re going to see are locals and reporters. It’s not that women aren’t wanted, it’s that they’re unnecessary. Well, until they need one to help get them busted out of a prison truck.

Lesson learned.

THE A-TEAM is that rare movie where nothing overly memorable happens and yet it is consistently enjoyable. How does this happen? Well, the characters are two-dimensional yet work, the story is obvious yet just what the film needs, the one-liners don’t make you laugh but they make you smile, the explosions don’t blow up anything significant but they look good doing it, and the movie always feels like it has the confidence to be exactly what it wants to be.

Plus, it’s paced exceedingly well, so you never feel like you’re sitting through pointless scenes to get to the stuff they showed you in the commercials to get your butt in the seat.

The actors deserve a lot of the credit. As 2-D as the characters might be, the actors are spot-on to deliver the needed performance. Liam Neeson is old, grizzled, and bad-ass. Bradley Cooper smirks. Rampage Jackson growls. Sharlto Copley is crazy. Jessica Biel wears big sunglasses. That’s all the film requires and that’s exactly what the actors deliver and it’s to their credit that they blend together so easily and so effectively.

A-TEAM felt like a sequel more than a franchise-starter because the characters so easily mesh together. Chemistry, kids. Chemistry. None of this is rocket science but there is a definite art to putting a good action movie together and A-TEAM is a good action movie with flat but enjoyable characters. Patrick Wilson is great as the bad guy.

The action scenes are neither memorable nor copies of better shot scenes elsewhere, so they keep you interested without blowing you away.

The movie opens in Mexico as Hannibal is about to get shot. He’s working with Face, meets B.A. when he carjacks his van, and breaks Murdock out of prison. They shoot a bunch of Mexicans and the film jumps “eight years and eighty successful missions” into the future, trading the Mexican sand for Iraqi sand.

Then the plot happens. The CIA asks Hannibal to steal some counterfeiting plates from some Iraqis. Major Dad tells Hannibal not to do it because Blackwater is gonna do it, but Hannibal insists, so Major Dad relents. Things go wrong. Major Dad dies. The A-Team is set-up and captured. They get put in prison. Six months pass. The CIA agent comes back and helps Hannibal break out of prison. Hannibal breaks everyone else out of prison. Things blow up. Jessica Biel scowls a lot. More things blow up. Major Dad isn’t dead, he’s working with Blackwater. Face comes up with a plan. Everyone wins. Except the A-Team is going back to jail. Except they escape. Insert TV show-reminiscent opening monologue.

We can dig into the plot stuff, but why bother? This movie exists. It’s fun. Things blow up.

I want more.