BloodBy Wilson Morales
When it comes to seeing a cop film, you can always bet that someone is not always on the right side of the law. If it’s a case of who-done-it, then the familiar territory is that it’s someone from the inside and we have to wait to the third act to figure out the culprit. When the culprit is identified early on, then it becomes a tale of morality and the story is set up for the audience to split hairs on whether the guilty should walk away or not. Such is the case with the British thriller, ‘Blood,’ starring Paul Bettany, Stephen Graham, Brian Cox, and Mark Strong.
While the performances are strong, especially from Graham and Strong, this cop drama is saddled with derivative plot points that maybe it would have been best if the writers added more complexity to avoid predictability.
Set in Northern England, the Fairburn brothers Joe (Paul Bettany) and Chrissy (Stephen Graham) are cops who joined at the hip as partners in the force. Always together, they each get to spend time apart when they go home to their respected loved one. Joe has a wife (Natasha Little) and a teenage daughter (Naomi Battrick), while Chrissy is quite settled with his girlfriend Jemma (Zoe Tapper). Along with their retired dad Lenny (Brian Cox), the former Chief of Police, everyone is quite happy until one case destroys that foundation.
The brutal murder and discovery of a young girl brings all hands on deck to solve this case. With the help of fellow officer Robert (Mark Strong), they have a suspect in custody, the former pervert/ flasher Jason Buleigh (Ben Crompton). Due to a lack of evidence, Jason has to be let go, but Joe has other ideas. In the old days, he and Chrissy would follow dad’s footsteps and bend the rules a bit to ensure that justice prevail and he’s aiming to make sure that Jason isn’t going anywhere. Using the isolated island as their playground to get Jason to confess, things take a turn for the worse when all doesn’t go according to plan. When Robert starts questioning Jason’s sudden disappearance, it’s a matter of which brother will crack under pressure and destroy their sense of sanity.
A few years ago, Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck co-starred in the thriller ‘State of Play,’ which was based on the six-hour BBC TV miniseries of the same name. Just like that film, ‘Blood’ also was based on six-hour BBC TV series. Both films seem to share the same pluses and minuses. The performances are excellent, but condensing the script from six hour to two hour, a lot is lost in the development of the characters. Rather than seeing characters multi-dimensional, all we get in the film are the usually cliché banter we see in the typical cop genres. The film is worth seeing for the names involved but one wishes the script wasn’t incomplete. If you are looking for the complete version, rent 2004’s TV series Conviction if you can find it.
