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Even in resignation to the harsh inevitability of it all, I’m a bit distressed to observe an American screen legend of Clint Eastwood’s iconographic stature at last embarking on his cruel descent into irrelevance, somewhat in adherence to an example recently cemented by Woody Allen. Many will contend that I was tuned out to this already ongoing development a fair many years ago, but that doesn’t hedge the fact that Blood Work remains his first production to date that could justifiably stand description as an utterly pro-forma chunk of potboiler mediocrity. At least on the most rudimentary level of puzzle-piecing gratification, this lean little policier hits the right nerve of sober, rather flat detective-fiction realism to lend the whole chore of clue-collecting a bit of intrigue, albeit the sort of straightforward, hackneyed, archaic intrigue that only a cinematic relic like Eastwood would have enough guts to dish up to post-Fincher-generation zombies like us. But as admirable as his minimalist streak may be, Eastwood’s directorial sensibility (though there isn’t much of one to distinguish, even from a fan’s point of view) is simply too frank and literal-minded to disguise the sheer banality of screenwriter Brian Helgeland’s cheap pitches toward moral resonance, strained efforts to weave a soul-searching psychodrama out of a retired FBI agent’s quest to avenge the murder of his transplant heart donor. It’s rare for a filmmaker to stumble over uncharted territory when giving this sort of material its requisite annual retread, but after Sean Penn’s The Pledge just last year subverted the same notions of compulsory, vindictive heroism that Blood Work is blandly championing today, Eastwood’s production generally smacks of little more than a naiveté that shouldn’t be congratulated for its by-the-book complacency. Just because this brand of filmmaking has so grown rare these days doesn’t mean it necessarily qualifies as worthwhile viewing. |
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Blood Work |
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capsule review by André de Alencar Lyon |
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Clint Eastwood |
