For Suckers Only

BLADE TRINITY

DIRECTED BY DAVID S. GOYER

OCEAN'S TWELVE

DIRECTED BY STEVEN SODERBERGH

FANS OF DISREPUTABLE genres like horror and action don't just love particular movies. They love the world created within those movies, a world of specific, recurring tropes stretching way back into popular culture. Their love is insatiable and knowingly naive; they know that 90 percent of everything is crap, and that the percentage might be somewhat higher for certain kinds of genre pictures. Yet they buy their tickets anyway, knowing full well that any pleasure they experience will likely be fleeting and enclosed by qualifiers; they buy their tickets because they enjoy being part of a like-minded community, and because even if the movie is no more than okay, it will at least give them a handy excuse for one more conversation with fellow buffs.

That said, it's hard to imagine even the most wild-eyed action or horror aficionado finding anything memorable in Blade Trinity, the third and weakest installment in Marvel Comics' ongoing series of ass-kicking vampire fantasies. Despite star Wesley Snipes' splendid beefcake brooding and underrated martial arts theatrics, the trilogy's half-human, half-vampire hero was always more interesting to think about than he was to watch-a gloomy warrior pariah, defending a world that did not deserve him; a fanged, sword-slinging descendant of The Searchers' Ethan Edwards, the outlaw Josey Wales and their ilk.

Only the hero's mostly unplumbed emotional depths and genre buffs' boundless thirst for action and horror could explain the box-office success of the original Blade, a crude, frenzied, juvenile mess with a preening and shallow bad guy. Blade II was a massive improvement, thanks to its cleverly juxtaposed dual storylines about controlling father figures and their striving, dissatisfied children, and the artistic commitment of still-underrated filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Cronos, The Devil's Backbone), an unapologetic horror enthusiast with a bold eye, dark wit and a Mexican Catholic's esthetic attraction to blood, death and rebirth.

This weak-assed third installment-directed by screenwriter David S. Goyer, who wrote the first Blade and cowrote the sequel-smothers any goodwill generated by del Toro's magisterial craziness. The movie is pure product pretending to be something else, a slap in the face to anyone who believed (not without good reason) that this series had the potential to be something besides a flashy, gory timewaster.

The promising plot revolves around a shadowy new group of bloodsuckers who believe modern vampires are weak, nightcrawling descendants of a mighty ancient race that once dared to walk in sunlight. Blade's foes, led by a campy vampire bitch named Danica Talos (Parker Posey), are hellbent on resurrecting Dracula (Dominic Purcell) and mining his pure bloodsucker DNA to breed a new species of super-vampires. To that end, they entrap vampire-hunting Blade into killing a human, expose him to the media and get him arrested. Blade is freed by a cocky band of young, vampire-hunting guerillas led by smart-aleck action hero Hannibal King (bulked-up comic scene stealer Ryan Reynolds, who's like Richard Dreyfuss in the body of Jean-Claude Van Damme) and a brooding archer named Abigail (Jessica Biel), who just happens to be the daughter of Blade's dead-then-resurrected mentor, Abraham Whistler (craggy Kris Kristofferson, shambling through for old time's sake).

The stage is set for an intriguing showdown that brings together a pure example of the master race (Dracula, who's nicknamed Drake), his worshipful minions, a hardy band of human warriors and their cranky mentor Blade, a one-time whippersnapper who now finds himself forced into a position of authority. The script also lays the narrative groundwork for a pulpy vampire love story between Blade (Whistler's surrogate son) and Abigail (Whistler's biological daughter), a relationship that should be fraught with mythic (and vaguely incestuous) overtones. But Goyer inexplicably ignores or botches every good idea he can muster, substituting sub-Buffy wisecracks for del Toro's poker-faced grandiosity. Unforgivably, he trashes basic elements of vampire mythology for no good reason.

Not only is Blade denied the dark, troubled love story he deserves (racist queasiness? or simple cluelessness?), the character is shoved to the margins of a film that, judging from its title, should be at least half interested in his ongoing journey. He's treated as a Terminator-ish, sexually neutered warrior, useful only for his ability to defend weaker or less-experienced good guys. Failing to appreciate either his main character or the consistently underrated actor who portrays him, Goyer perversely denies Snipes the chance to indulge in the sort of monster-movie poetry to which he's entitled. He treats Blade like an attack dog and only deigns to appreciate him when he's hacking up foes by the bushel. In lieu of deepening Blade's character, Goyer fixates on the physically formidable but dramatically anemic Abigail (played rather robotically by Biel, who dies onscreen without a bow in her hand) and on her pal Hannibal, a theoretically minor character who becomes the film's de facto star thanks to Reynolds' knowing, sarcastic performance. (I can't think of another young actor who could get such a huge laugh simply by pronouncing the word "karate.")

Even more depressing, the movie undermines beloved, basic tropes for no good reason. Brooding, elegant Dracula, the wellspring of a century's worth of nightmares, is presented here as yet another homily-spouting, Eurotrash action-film thug. And Goyer runs roughshod over the innate pansexuality of the vampire myth. Dracula, Lestat and their descendants are fascinating not just for their outwardly horrific traits (bloodlust, fear of sunlight) but for their rejection of repressive sexual norms. Vampires are by definition pansexual; they take sustenance and pleasure wherever they find it, and their underground existence has always given comfort to people who felt ignored or ostracized by the mainstream. Blade Trinity kills the vampire myth's humanist impulses with sexist and homophobic slurs ("You fucking fruitcake!") that are no less offensive for being tossed off so casually.

Where Blade II tacitly united all fringe-dwellers beneath a democratizing umbrella of doomy defiance, Trinity pushes them out the door into the harsh sunlight of straight-boy action-movie macho. At times, it seems as if Goyer's true agenda is to purge pansexuality from the vampire myth and make the genre safe for straight boys who love horror but are uncomfortable with all that transgression stuff. That's Goyer's right as a filmmaker, but it's awfully unsporting.

It is possible for a filmmaker to be too confident. Steven Soderbergh, a talented, versatile and refreshingly laid-back auteur, has been going down that road for a few years now, ever since his intriguing but deeply flawed Traffic and his uncommonly intelligent but dramatically boilerplate Erin Brokovich won him a fistful of Oscars and transformed him from outsider to insider. His movies are always promising, and often sneakily good. His gentle Solaris was treated a bit unfairly, perhaps because critics considered a Tarkovsky remake an unforgivable act of effrontery.

But he's getting a bit too comfortable with his playfulness. Ocean's Eleven was cheerful nonsense, assembled with clockwork vigor, but it's an awfully thin movie, and in retrospect, its box-office success seems less a reflection of esthetic merit than a fluke of timing; it was released in December 2001, when Americans were ready for a latte-frothy caper flick that was more about performing than criminality, and that managed to be exciting and funny without killing anyone.

If Ocean's Eleven was light, its sequel Ocean's Twelve is weightless, and so aware of its own weightlessness that it ends up insulting the viewer. It's easily the most slapped-together movie Soderbergh has ever been associated with. Shanghaied into thievery again to repay the money they stole from casino owner Terry Benedict (Andy Garcia), Soderbergh reunites George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and the rest of the gang return for another go-round, this time in Rome, Monte Carlo and other Bond-tested locales. There is a script, but everybody still seems to be making the movie up as they go. If it weren't so long, disorganized and frequently tedious (Soderbergh's snap-zooms and David Holmes' retro-70s soundtrack riffs fail to goose the movie along), the sheer casualness might not be so irritating. After all, Beat the Devil was pretty much made up on the spot, and it's still watchable.

Ocean's Twelve is barely watchable even when you're watching it. Soderbergh overplays almost every good joke (including an extended celebrity impersonation bit) and many bad ones as well, and he keeps Bernie Mac offscreen for much of the movie. Where the first film was about actors as crooks and entertainment as thievery (the heist and its preparations suggested a Broadway premiere following an out-of-town tryout), this one is about a bunch of actors wearing great clothes and kidding each other. I'm sure it would be fun if we'd been there, too. But we weren't. They went to Europe and all we got is this lousy movie. o