Stephen Norrington’s Blade is a brilliant film, Guillermo Del Toro’s Blade II is Aliens to Blade‘s Alien and then along comes Blade: Trinity, directed by David S. Goyer (screenwriter on all three films), playing the Batman Forever card and guffing up a perfectly good franchise. What Blade 3 (Trinity’s an awful subtitle) did have though was the presence of one great performance, Ryan Reynolds as Hannibal King – seemingly channeling Jason Lee but in a rather ripped action star body, Reynolds gave far better than the movie deserved stealing the whole show from the likes of Snipes, Kristoffersen, Parker Posey and Jessica Biel.
Reynolds was no stranger to acting as lifeguard to drowning pictures, he single handedly made the absolutely bland Van Wilder: Party Liason very entertaining with his expert comic timing, delivered with perfect dead pan and his rogue-ish good looks. Similarly he made the totally risible Just Friends watchable, he popped up in Joe Carnahan’s messy Smokin’ Aces, he took an interesting – if flawed – project in the shape of The Nines, and most recently has acted in the so-so Adventureland and the terrible X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Now after much industry talk about the comic book spin-off Deadpool, Reynolds has been snapped up to star in Martin Campbell’s adaptation of The Green Lantern. Neither project particularly excites me on its own merits, though Reynolds’ Deadpool stole the entire film from Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine (despite only being on screen for about three minutes). It seems that Reynolds is finally getting his bid for super-stardom, but does this usher in a change for his career, will Reynolds now be head-lining bigger and better projects, or will this strange phenomenon of great performance, poor film continue?
Are there other actors out there who suffer from Ryan Reynolds Syndrome? And have I over-looked a film starring Reynolds that is actually as good as his performance in it?
© BRWC 2010.
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