Cuts like a knife.

David Goyer's managed to carve himself a nice little niche in Hollywood: he wrote the second Crow movie, Dark City and all three installments of the Blade series. As such, he deserves some credit for the recent revival of comic-book movies, a defunct genre since the disastrous duo of Batman Forever and Batman & Robin.

In an auspicious bit of karma, Goyer was tapped to write the script for the new Batman Begins, as well as two other four-colour franchises: Ghost Rider (currently filming and due out next year) and The Flash. In addition to principle screenwriting responsibilities, Goyer's also going to direct those latter two projects and if Blade: Trinity is any indication, the results will be mixed.

On the one hand, Trinity featured some nifty props, great choreography and eccentric casting. Ryan Reynolds wears "hypermasculine motormouthed wiseguy" like a tailored suit and indie poster girl Parker Posey(!) thumbs her nose at casting agents everywhere with her campy, wickedly self-conscious performance as the villains' ringleader, a psychotic ringmaster to a pack of thuggish misfits. Callum Keith Rennie, fresh from a mesmerizing (but all-too-brief) role on Battlestar Galactica, obviously had a few bills to pay. Jessica Biel channels Buffy in a predictably-scripted "skinny white girls kick ass" routine, though we were pleasantly surprised that she didn't have to be victimized before "discovering" strength--I suppose that's something. Wesley Snipes is what he is.

The violence is cartoonish and there's no sex (although we do get some long, lingering shots of Reynolds' and Biel's washboard stomachs), but I still recently advised an acquaintance to not rent this movie for her thirteen-year-old son. Here's why: the language.

Anyone who knows me--or has sat within earshot of me for more than ten minutes--knows that I like to sprinkle my speech with the occasional salty bon mot. In other words, I have a bit of a potty mouth. Profanity and blasphemy do not, in and of themselves, offend me. Hell, I like it. In Blade: Trinity, having characters curse creatively apparently wasn't enough for Goyer. Maybe he was trying to épate la bourgeoisie, maybe he really is just incredibly juvenile--either way, his characters fuel their exchanges with some of the most vitriolic homophobia and misogyny I've seen in a long time. The hate that girds these diatribes is premised on the most savage kind of privilege and as a result, the whole movie was soured for me.

I know exactly what Goyer's intended audience is and I know that the day after watching this movie, junior-high playgrounds across the country got a little uglier.