Movie Review - Blood

Blood (2013)

Starring Paul Bettany, Mark Strong, Brian Cox, Stephen Graham, and Ben Crompton

Directed by Nick Murphy

***This film is currently streaming on Netflix***

Rarely do you hear me saying that I wish a movie were longer.  In the case of Blood, however, a noir-ish character study, I longed for a few more minutes to give a little more depth to Paul Bettany's Joe Fairburn, a British cop who takes a trip on quite an emotional roller coaster after a young teenage girl turns up dead on the streets of his town.  The case itself isn't anything particularly out of the ordinary, but this murder affects Joe more than usual causing him to take his investigation to harsh (and illegal) extremes.

Paul Bettany is fantastic here, creating a great amount of depth in (I think) the best film role I've seen him tackle.  Guilt is a key factor in Joe Fairburn's emotions and Bettany makes the audience fully understand his pained conscience.  Alongside Bettany are some very nice turns from Stephen Graham as Joe's brother and police officer partner Chrissie who also finds himself racked with guilt over his brother's misdeeds, Brian Cox as Joe and Chrissie's father (their former police captain boss and now dementia-ridden and addled), and Mark Strong as a fellow investigator who thinks Joe may be hiding something from his colleagues.  All four men are quite strong and they're all given some nice characteristics to sink their teeth into.

The problem with Blood is that it almost moves along too rapidly.  While Joe's psychological downturn is fully understandable, I wanted a bit more time to allow Bettany to gradually express his character's swings of emotions.  Upon the film finishing, the credits rolled and stated that the film was based off the tv series "Conviction" which I discovered was a six-part British miniseries.  Perhaps the story works better in that format as opposed to the quite shortened ninety minute runtime here.   Still, director Nick Murphy creates an ominous atmosphere surrounding the character of Joe Fairburn that I must recommend a watch.  Blood is one of those reasons why I haven't crafted my Best of 2013 list yet.  It's little gems like these that may find a placement or two in my final lists.  One of these days I'll get around to the RyMickey Awards (probably not until September now), but that'll just give you more time to check this out.

The RyMickey Rating:  B