Blade Trinity

(Herald rating: * * * )

The first Blade was cool. The second one was deeply darkly gothic but not quite as cool.The third? Well, at least it's funny. It's occasionally very stupid but it's not boring.

Though it's obviously high time Blade should up stakes and get out of the vampire-slaying business. The trouble with the third and hopefully final in the franchise, starring Snipes as the anti-hero of the Marvel comic, is that in the meantime the likes of The Matrix came along and stole its thunder.

Blade's genre-crunching blend of martial arts, horror and blaxploitation - all to a hip-hop/ techno soundtrack - seemed fairly stylish a few years back. Now it can feel like one long ad, possibly for those pills that keep you going all night. Or in this film's case, Apple gadgets, such is the blatant product placement - those iPods help drown out the unimaginative hydraulic score of the film itself.

There is a plot involving that DNA stuff and a fiendish plan by the vampires to exploit humans which seems lifted from The Matrix. But they still have Blade to contend with. Though he's now got the FBI on his tattooed tail due to a slip-up on the job.

Director Goyer, who wrote the previous two instalments, successfully injects some new blood into the franchise's varicose veins.

Biel as the long-lost daughter of Whistler, Blade's grizzled mentor, is possibly what Buffy wanted to be when she grew up. And Reynolds as her fellow Nightstalker comes armed with as many one-liners as silver bullets. His comedy sideshow means there's less chance for Snipes to stand around looking like his teeth are a bit big while glowering through those contact lenses. Which, this far into the franchise, is a very good thing.

But this comes with one lesson not learned from Van Helsing - if you're going to bring back Dracula at least make him, oh I don't know, scary? Charismatic? Not looking like Eric Bana's angry younger brother? Because that's what Aussie Dominic Purcell, playing back-from-beyond Drac, comes across as.

Though it's pretty funny that the ancient leader of the fang club president is unearthed somewhere in Iraq. Will ya look at that? A weapon of destructive mastication.

CAST: Wesley Snipes, Ryan Reynolds, Jessica Biel, Parker Posey, Dominic Purcell, Kris Kristofferson
DIRECTOR: David S. Goyer
RATING: R16 (violence, offensive language, horror)
RUNNING TIME: 114 mins
SCREENING: Village Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas