Paycheck trumps Snipes” promise

When you’re prowling through your neighborhood video store tonight, looking for something to quench your thirst for a good Friday-night movie, you’ll likely encounter Wesley Snipes.

Not in person, of course … unless the lure of the Inland Northwest has proven just too much for him to resist.

Which, let’s face it, isn’t likely.

No, chances are good that the only way you’ll meet up with Snipes is if you decide to rent one of his films.

And since the most prominent of Snipes’ films will be one of the major home-entertainment releases this week, namely “Blade: Trinity,” that’s the one you’re most likely to pick up.

If you do, ask yourself this: Whatever happened to Snipes’ once-promising career as a dramatic actor?

In recent years, Snipes has become an action hero. And, of course, there’s nothing wrong with that. Plenty of serious actors, including Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford and Will Smith, have made their names by starring in action movies.

The difference is that Willis and Ford and especially Smith have made their share of serious dramas as well.

His “Die Hard” movies aside, Willis has played a Vietnam veteran in “In Country,” a jaded journalist in “Bonfire of the Vanities,” a troubled boxer in “Pulp Fiction” and the man who counsels the boy who sees dead people in “The Sixth Sense.”

Along with his Indiana Jones films, Ford has starred in such films as “Witness,” “Presumed Innocent” and “Random Hearts.” And in addition to being one of the “Bad Boys,” Smith has done “Six Degrees of Separation,” “The Legend of Bagger Vance,” and he even won an Oscar nomination for playing the title role in “Ali.”

If nothing else, Sylvester Stallone can brag about having written, and starred in, the original “Rocky.”

What about Snipes, then? Well, he started off well enough. He debuted at age 24 in the 1986 Goldie Hawn vehicle “Wildcats.” That same year, taking advantage of his athletic build, producers of the film “Streets of Gold” cast him as an Olympic boxing hopeful.

Three years later, Snipes starred in the film that first earned him critical attention: He played the light-hitting Willie Mays Hayes in “Major League.”

Then began a string of films that were about as far from sports movies as you can get. In 1990 and ‘91 Spike Lee hired him twice, for “Mo’ Better Blues” and “Jungle Fever.” A year later, cast alongside Eric Stoltz and Helen Hunt, he played a paraplegic in “The Waterdance.”

Snipes returned to sports, of sorts, with 1992’s “White Men Can’t Jump.” After that, he picked up a gun, playing, respectively, an ex-cop, a cop, a cop, a criminal, a criminal and a federal marshal in a string of films before putting on a dress for the drag-queen flick “To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.”

But that was just about it. Other than taking a part in Maya Angelou’s 1998 film “Down in the Delta,” Snipes, from that point on, stuck with action. And no series – there are three of them now – is more action-oriented than “Blade,” “Blade II” and “Blade: Trinity.”

You could make the argument that these kinds of films are all that an African-American actor can score. After all, even the great Denzel Washington has, of late, taken to doing action. The movie for which he scored his Best Actor Oscar, “Training Day,” is more drama than action – but there is a fair amount of gunplay.

But then there’s this: If Spike Lee doesn’t feel the need to compromise, then why should anyone else?

You also could argue that there needs to be African-American action stars. Kids need role models, so why shouldn’t black kids look up at the big screen and see adult versions of themselves fighting vampires or being X-Men?

Again, there’s nothing wrong with action. And of the “Blade” films, the second – which was directed by Mexican director Guillermo del Toro – actually has qualities that make it more than just an exercise in genre.

Still, sticking to action films alone is typically the career path taken by those who don’t have the talent to do anything else. Schwarzenegger, for example. Steven Seagal. Stallone.

Anyone remember Mr. T?

Those who have more talent, as it seemed Snipes once did, should, at least on occasion, aim higher than a mere payroll.

If you do happen to see him tonight, you might tell him so.