Despite these troubles (and production difficulties plagued Blade II as well), Blade: Trinity manages to be a watchable action movie. Goyer show promise as a director, and for a new director, he seems remarkably at ease with such pyrotechnic and pugilistic-heavy material. His script as well is admirable, although it often falls into simplistic puns and lame one-liners—almost all of which belong to Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds is the Achilles Heel of the movie: his constant wise-cracking and mugging detracts from the story, and when his former vampire lover Danica Talos (Parker Posey) starts smacking him around, you’ll wish you could join in.

The story sticks close to the urban street world of the first movie instead of the fantasy adventures of Blade II, but Goyer keeps the action interesting. The beginning of the film brings the cops and the feds down on Blade after one of his vampire-disintegrating rampages, and it makes for a pleasant, realistic touch to the comic book world, very similar to the verisimilitude his script to Batman Begins brought to Batman’s world. How many times in most generic action movies have you wondered when the cops were going to finally show up? Goyer makes the cops crucial players in the drama, forcing Blade to go up against humans instead of the vampires he usually dispatches guilt-free.

The bloodsuckers, led by Danica, have again hatched a crazy ‘final solution’ to enslave the humans permanently to their bloodlust, and it requires the raising up of Dracula himself, who now goes by the much hipper name “Drake.” Played by Dominic Purcell, Drake is another weak point in the film; dressed like weightlifting Euro-trash, Purcell looks extremely unmenancing and just a touch silly. Here is a case where using an old-fashioned elegant Dracula would have broken tradition and seemed like something new.

While Reynolds annoys as one of the vampire hunters who joins Blade in the fight against Danica’s final solution, lithe Jessica Biel gives an impressive turn as the bow-and-arrow wielding Abigail, daughter of Blade’s long-time ally Whistler (Kris Kristofferson in a sadly truncated role). Her seriousness balances out Reynolds’s constant punning, and her athleticism makes her a very believable vampire slayer. She should have played Elektra, not Jennifer Garner. In fact, Jessica Biel can pretty much play anything anywhere, and I’ll watch it. I’ll go no further.

For a film like Blade: Trinity, the basic question a review needs to answer is: “Is it exciting?” And, despite the deficiencies I’ve mentioned (and I haven’t bothered to elaborate on the horrendous performance from wrestler Triple H as one of the vamp heavies), Blade: Trinity delivers the excitement goods. The choreography of the fights doesn’t break any new ground, but at least the sword fights and gunplay make sense to watch and avoid some of the recent filmmaking clichés of aerial acrobatics (Blade II also stayed away from this trap). For a two-hour action investment, Blade: Trinity pays back its money.

But, considering Snipes’s attitude toward it (and some recent troubles with filing his taxes), I wouldn’t invest in a Blade: Quartet any time in the near future.