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| Star/producer/director Clint Eastwood looks determined here on a simple poster for Blood Work in black and reds |
McCaleb is a locally famous homicide detective, who is retiring just as he suddenly requires a heart transplantation. A couple of years later he is contacted by a woman, whose sister's heart he now has, who comes to him with a sincere plea: Find her murderer!
Blood Work is written by Brian Helgeland (Payback (1999)), adapting Michael Connelly's (Echo Park (2006)) same-titled 1998 novel, and directed by Californian master filmmaker Clint Eastwood (Play Misty for Me (1971)), whose 23rd feature it is. Eastwood also produced and plays the protagonist McCaleb in the film.
Eastwood seems hopeful to recapture the success he enjoyed with previous cop thrillers like Richard Tuggle's great Tightrope (1984), which he starred in, but Blood Work lacks more than the sex of that fine film.
Wanda de Jesus (CSI: Miami (2002-03)) plays the young Latin-American woman who comes to McCaleb with her plea for him to help, while she falls for him despite their enormous age difference; a romance which the film doesn't make entirely credible. McCaleb also has a somewhat closer age-wise African-American ex whom he could have gone back to, but instead the filmmakers make this other reach.
Several elements in Blood Work don't come together: Jeff Daniels (Steve Jobs (2015)) is a comic sidekick 'dude' on a boat, SPOILER - who turns out to be a psychopath. His character's 180 degree turn from sympathetic to a racist madman is also not made credible.
An Eastwood fan will have patience with Blood Work due to the star's presence in it, but it is undeniably one of his poorest films, heavy on clichés, unoriginal and lacking in suspense. A big oops.
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J. Edgar (2011) - Eastwood, Black and DiCaprio's great, intense biopic
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The Changeling (2008) or, The Christine Collins Story
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The Dead Pool (1988) - The highly entertaining last Dirty Harry movie (starring actor)
City Heat (1984) - Eastwood and Reynolds wrestle dispassionately in Benjamin's messy period affair (co-starring actor)
Tightrope (1984) - An undervalued Clint Eastwood sex killer thriller (starring actor)
Any Which Way You Can (1980) or, More Monkey Business! (starring actor)
Escape from Alcatraz (1979) - Siegel, Tuggle and Eastwood's phenomenal prison escape thriller (starring actor)
Every Which Way but Loose (1978) or, Honky Tonk Monkey Business! (starring actor)
The Enforcer (1976) - Eastwood teaches revolutionaries a lesson in third, less punchy Dirty Harry (starring star)
The Eiger Sanction (1975) - Eastwood's mountain climbing dud
The Beguiled (1971) - Intense, erotic Civil War kammerspiel thriller (starring actor)
Dirty Harry (1971) - Eastwood's great, signature renegade cop character comes to life (starring actor)
Coogan's Bluff (1968) or, Dopes and Hippies, Beat It! (starring actor)
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966) - Leone ends his poncho trilogy with certified classic (starring actor)
For a Few Dollars More/Per Qualche Dollaro in Più (1965) or, Return of the Poncho Killer (co-starring actor)
A Fistful of Dollars (1964) or, Killer in a Poncho (starring actor)
Watch a short trailer for the film here
Cost: 50 mil. $
Box office: 31.7 mil. $
= Huge flop (returned 0.63 times its cost)
[Blood Work premiered 6 August (California) and runs 110 minutes. Shooting lasted 38 days in February - ? in California, including Los Angeles. The film opened #5, behind fellow new release xXx, holdover hit Signs, new release Spy Kids 2: Island of Lost Dreams and holdover hit Austin Powers in Goldmember, to a 7.3 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it left the top 5 in its 2nd weekend and grossed 26.2 mil. $ (82.6 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 1.3 mil. $ (4.1 %) and Spain with 987k $ (3.1 %). The film won an award at the Venice International Film Festival. Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5/4 star review, translating to 3 notches higher than this one. Eastwood returned with Mystic River (2003) as a filmmaker and in his own Million Dollar Baby (2004) as an actor. Blood Work is rotten at 53 % with a 5.54/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]
What do you think of Blood Work?
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