Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Lawrence Jacomelli
Starring: Britni Camacho, John Schwab, Sydney Brumfield, Travis Lincoln Cox, Felix Merback, Wyomi Reed
Among the most effective scenes in Hitchcock's Psycho is one that occurs before Norman Bates has even entered the
picture. Janet Leigh's Marion Crane has fled with money stolen from her
employer and decides to spend the night asleep in her car on the side of a
desert highway. She's abruptly woken the following morning by the sight of
a cop staring in her window. The ensuing scene, as Marion is questioned by
said lawman, is textually tense because we know she has committed a crime,
but it also preys on our fear of being pulled over in the middle of
nowhere by a cop. Even if we're completely innocent, there's that horrible
feeling that maybe this police officer is one of those psychos with a
badge you hear about, and it's just you and him with nobody else around
for miles.
For women, there's the added fear of sexual assault, and for people of
colour the worry that this is a racist cop who uses his badge to indulge
in his bigotry. In Lawrence Jacomelli's directorial debut Blood Star (co-written with George Kelly and Victoria Hinks Taylor), the protagonist who finds their own nervous image reflected in the
mirror shades of a crooked desert cop is a woman of colour. Racism and
the threat of sexual assault are never explicitly raised but it's
impossible not to consider both throughout the narrative, adding an
extra layer of tension.
Young Latina Bobbie (Britni Camacho) is driving through the
New Mexico desert on her way back to California to reunite with her
abusive boyfriend, despite the pleas of her sister. Stopping off for
gas, she's approached by Sheriff Bilstein (John Schwab), who is
friendly on the surface, even offering her a can of soda, but has a
quiet menace that unsettles Bobbie. Further down the road, Bobbie puts
pedal to the metal and is caught in the Sheriff's speed trap. When he
pulls Bobbie over, the Sheriff is no longer so friendly, accusing
Bobbie of throwing something out the window that has smashed his siren
light. Between her speeding fine and paying for the damage, Bobbie is
presented with a thousand dollar bill. After some negotiating, the
Sheriff agrees to tear up the speeding fine and settle for $300 in
cash. Taking Bobbie's cellphone as collateral, he directs her to
return to the gas station, withdraw the cash from an ATM, and wait for
his arrival. When the Sheriff is a no-show, Bobbie decides to sacrifice her phone
and hit the road again. This only serves to rile up the Sheriff even
more, who ups the ante by shooting out one of her tyres. Thus begins a
game of cat and mouse as the Sheriff pursues Bobbie across the
desert.
Blood Star is a throwback to all those great thrillers made between the '70s
and '90s set in the American SouthWest where city slickers run afoul of
crooked lawmen and dangerous rednecks, or crooked and dangerous redneck
lawmen. With so many American movies now being filmed in Canada, the
SouthWest has been unfortunately neglected, but Blood Star reminds us just what a great setting it is. Jacomelli has clearly studied the aforementioned thrillers and borrows
their iconography of mirror shades, rundown gas stations and diners, and
cop cars appearing through heat shimmers in the distance. It adds a
level of production value that you just don't get from movies shot north
of the 49th parallel.
Camacho and Schwab make for a great cat and mouse pairing. Rather than
the typical timid final girl archetype, Camacho's Bobbie is
tough-talking and sassy, but quickly finds herself in over her head in
Sheriff Bilstein's terrain. Schwab channels Clint Eastwood with his
distinctive vocal inflections, and with all but his chin obscured by his
hat and regulation mirrored sunglasses, he has the menacing appearance
of Judge Dredd.
The initial tension of Blood Star's build-up unfortunately dissipates as the film suffers from giving
its protagonist too many squandered opportunities to get out of trouble,
and we spend a lot of the movie's second half rolling our eyes at the
decisions Bobbie makes. When it becomes clear that the Sheriff is toying
with his prey the threat is diluted as he repeatedly allows Bobbie to
escape. By the final act we're spending too much time thinking about how
infeasible the Sheriff's crimes are, a problem which could have been
avoided by setting the movie in the 20th century rather than our current
era of cellphones and GPS tracking. There's enough here to superficially
appease an audience thirsty for sweaty SouthWest road thrillers,
but Blood Star pales in comparison to its predecessors like The Hitcher, Duel and Breakdown.
Blood Star is on UK/ROI VOD
from October 7th.
