Blade: Trinity

After the chilling excitement of Blade II, where could the franchise go next? Comedy? Surely not.

Surely yes.

Blade: Trinity is nonsense, but so what? A comicbook adaptation requires neither sense nor sensibility, rather style, action and charisma.

Wesley Snipes is diminished by his younger, cooler co-stars. Suddenly, he looks small and idiotic in his black leather trenchcoat, with samurai sword attachment. He's not a talker, he's a glarer. With sculptured lips, Roman nose, tattooed neck and blazing eye, he's like a toy. Switch him on and he'll kickbox his way across the kitchen floor.

Knowledge of the earlier movies helps. Otherwise, you won't understand what on earth is going on. Isn't that Parker Posey, looking her kooky worst, with big teeth and a mouth that could devour Arizona? Yes indeedy! She's the bitch vampire whose going to bring Blade down, but first she must resurrect Nancy The Nasty, otherwise known as Dracula, the prince of undeadness. She finds him under a ton of sand in the Syrian desert.

Enough of the story. All you need to know is that Blade is an ex-vampire, who had a Damascus Road experience, and now spends his life killing them. Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) is a lame, technically astute, southern longhair, who provides Blade with fatherly advice and special medicine to keep him off the blood. His daughter, Abigail ("I was born later, out of wedlock"), suddenly turns up as a fully fledged archer, with her pal Hannibal King, another recovering vampire, who behaves like a stand-up comic.

New York, or wherever it is, has an infestation of serial suckers, who behave like street punks, hassling lone women in the subway. Blade and his crew ash them. In the old days, a silver bullet, a dose of sunlight or a stake through the chest would be enough. Now Blade's tool, or Abigail's syringe-tipped arrows, instantly ignite them and they burn up in seconds.

Dracula (Dominic Purcell) can't act and the fights become repetitive. Blade has no sense of humour - you knew that already - but Snipes is made to look iconic, which means he's a dull date, while Jessica Biel, as Abigail, is tomboyishly sexy and Ryan Reynolds, as King, an energetic japester. Even the craggy country singer (Kristofferson) and the deliciously loopy Posey have more going for them than little Wes with his big blade.