Third installment in the god-awful series about the preening and posturing vampire-hunter out of Marvel Comics. The previous installment at least had the curiosity of a slumming Guillermo del Toro at the helm. He, in the meantime, took his slumming elsewhere (Hellboy), leaving the scriptwriter of the first two installments, David S. Goyer, to assume command. If so gifted a filmmaker and so strong a personality as del Toro could make no (or little) difference, a novice will have no (or little) chance. Especially if the novice has been the man writing these god-awful scripts. The present one literally digs up the original Dracula (in Iraq, to be exact, "about six months ago"), now going by the name of Drake and looking rather like a skinhead soccer hooligan (Dominic Purcell), when he isn't shape-shifting into a gargoyle Lucifer. The lone-wolf hero, Blade, is joined for the occasion by an independent team of swaggering, swashbuckling vampire-hunters, calling themselves the Night Stalkers ("We were going to go with the Care Bears, but that was taken"), under the leadership of an au courant Kick-Ass Chick (Jessica Biel). This turns out to be the daughter of Blade's personal weapons manufacturer, wheezily played by Kris Kristofferson, who gets killed for the second time in three movies. (As that character was called Whistler, the new character would be Whistler's Daughter.) Right-hand man of the Kick-Ass Chick is a traditional Smart-Ass Sidekick (Ryan Reynolds), who lowers the tone another couple of octaves: "Unlike typical vampires," he says of the Parker Posey vampire, "her fangs are located in her vagina." (2004) — Duncan Shepherd
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