Director Nick Murphy takes a noted cast to the seaside of England for Blood a crime drama filled with plot twists and intrigue. The film, now out on DVD puts all the suspense, deception and trauma in your living room. Originally a television series in Great Britain Blood gets condensed into a tight hour and a half, but looses none of the intended poignant qualities. It’s like taking cable TV’s “The Killing” and eliminating all the superfluous content and giving the audience a whole story in one sitting.
The story centers on brothers Joe (Paul Bettany) and Chrissie Fairburn (Stephen Graham) who have been working together over the years as detectives for a coastline city in England. The two get assigned a case of a young twelve-year-old girl who is found stabbed and beaten to death. Being a young female crime it sets in motion an urgency to find the killer and get the perpetrator off the streets. After some detective work by an unpopular police investigator Robert Seymour (Mark Strong) a suspect Jason Buleigh (Ben Crompton) gets brought in for questioning.
Due to some problems with the evidence Buleigh gets let go causing a rift within the force. Determined to find proof that will stick, Joe and Chrissie do some ‘illegal’ searching through Buleigh’s room at his mother’s house coming up with some photos of young girls that may be the confirmation they need. But, Joe wants answers right away and takes another path to pin the murder on Buleigh and close the case.
The plot moves along at a fast clip under the direction of Nick Murphy (The Awakening) who melds the long winded TV Show into a tight concise movie. Giving his audience a chance to get right into the meat of the intriguing story, he uses incidents to give you the essence of his characters. He throws a lot of irons into the fire including the addition of former detective and his boys’ father Lenny Fairburn now a demented soul who has a short term memory, but a long term heartache over a case he botched so many years ago.
Top stars Bettany (A Beautiful Mind) and Stephen Graham (Public Enemies) do a terrific job with the film portraying the Fairburn brothers who are the embodiment of the phrase “blood is thicker than water” while watching each others back. While Bettany makes his Joe a leader that’s determined to show his father that he’s the better detective, Graham shows his Chrissie as a devotee who will do almost anything to protect Joe. I like the way each gets thrown different stimulus by the plot attempting to pull them apart. It keeps the guessing game at a high level, the damaging incidents more meaningful and the decisions almost impossible.
There are downsides to the film and one of them comes with the character development that could have been a lot better for Mark Strong’s character Robert Seymour. In the beginning much of his character gets put off as just one of the detectives who add bits to the story. Maybe we would have found out more about his character during the weekly television series and due to condensing the show felt it did not damage the plot to eliminate his importance during the first two acts. But, for me, I found myself being surprised a little too often as to the character’s authority within the whole crime solving process.
I do like this powerful emotional film that works on both sides of the fence crossing over from backing the progress of the Fairburn’s to a twist that puts the two under attack. If it had been a television series I had to watch, I would have certainly got antsy from the long drawn out crime till the final resolve. Much like the first two seasons of The Killing that I watched each week diligently, after a period of time it become a chore rather than an anticipated night of challenging my perception.
Blood has not been rated by the MPAA but does contain language, violence and gore. Be cautious when deciding to allow immature children see the film as it does have some scenes that may be very inappropriate, especially the one showing the lifeless body of the young girl. You may also want to turn on the subtitles if you are having a hard time understanding the British accents of the characters.
The video quality of the movie is actually very good presented on DVD. Even the dark scenes show well, and there are a lot of them. The good thing however is that you can always run some of the film back if you feel you missed anything, especially the scenes on the island. The movie does need to be glum and dreary due to the time of year the film depicts and the locations.
The sound quality using the Dolby Digital 5.1 or the 2.0 provides a very good presentation with no loss of dialogue. If your ears are not tuned to the British dialects and accents however, you have the alternative of using the English subtitles.
Specifications and additional film information:
Cast: Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, Stephen Graham, Zoe Tapper, Ben Crompton
Directed by: Nick Murphy
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Genre: Crime Drama, TV Remake
Running Time: 1 hr 32 min
Video Release Date: September 10, 2013
Original Film Release Date: August 9, 2013
Language: English
Format: DVD
Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1
Video: Anamorphic Widescreen, Aspect Ratio 2.35:1
Subtitles: English SDH
Number of Discs: 1 Disc
Distributed by: RLJ Entertainment
Writer, critic, film editor John Delia, Sr. has been on all sides of the movie business from publications to film making. He has worked as a film critic with ACED Magazine for more than 20 years and other publications for a total of 40 years. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Florida. John is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association and Critics Association of Central Florida Send John a message at jdelia@acedmagazine.com
