New Release Review - Blood

A pair of detective brothers take the law into their own hands, with disastrous results.

Directed by: Nick Murphy
Starring: Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, Stephen Graham, Zoe Tapper

'Blood' is a misleading title for this completely unoriginal thriller that only has a surprisingly great cast to help make it only slightly memorable because there are very few thrills and even less blood. After thinking on it for a bit, I can only assume the title refers to the symbolism of blood tying a family together.
Like many other detective thrillers, 'Blood' presents a family man, Joe (Bettany), who is a detective with his brother, Chrissie (Graham). Both live under the shadow of their father, Lenny (Cox), as they try to seek justice regarding a man they believe, without a doubt, molested and murdered a young girl. When things go too far and they find the man was actually innocent, their justification of what they had done begins to crumble. From there, the film becomes a race of sorts between the brothers cracking under the pressure of their guilt and their colleague, Robert (Strong), doing his very best to find what happened to their former suspect.
The film asks the burning question: what is worse, getting caught for murdering another man or getting away with it? To answer this, the film follows the same old TV movie formula that has its lead characters endlessly lying to each other and their families to “protect them” from their own horrible secrets, only to have their loved ones end up suffering anyway because they know something is wrong, but they don’t know what it is. In Joe’s case, his already shaky relationship with his wife and daughter become tested, and his brother’s loyalty comes into question. Chrissie has a harder time, as he is seeing the woman of his dreams, but suddenly believes he doesn’t deserve her and she finally demands answers. Together, both Joe and Chrissie have to deal with their father, whose mind is failing while he continues to remind the two how he did things back in the day. The brothers also have to contend with their colleague, who is determined to get to the truth no matter who it ends up hurting.
Ultimately, by far the best thing about this film is the superb cast. Each actor in the film brings his/her character from the page in his/her own special way, only to have the page turn its back on them by restricting their characters’ growth and leaving the viewer wanting something different from what they have already seen.

5/10

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Andy Comer