Clint Eastwood’s latest slugfest, Blood Work, is ultimately just another Dirty Harry opus. And by now Harry has become boring, not because Eastwood keeps trying to redefine the character the public tends to remember him for, but because he doesn’t try to redefine the punk villains who keep Harry busy and dirty.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Much more interesting than this teenage fantasy is the mainly unseen woman character who inadvertently keeps the hero alive. FBI ace Terry McCaleb (Eastwood) suffers a heart attack after chasing the serial killer but survives, thanks to a heart transplant from a young Latino single mother, a victim of a convenience-store holdup. Graciella (Wanda De Jesus), the slain woman’s sister, tries to persuade McCaleb—retired and recuperating from the surgery on his boat docked in LA’s harbor—to find the killer. Naturally, the two eventually become involved, suggesting an incest fantasy that’s a lot fresher than the tired serial-killer doppelganger theme.
The humdrum and realistic characters include McCaleb’s stern and principled doctor (Anjelica Huston)—not a western schoolmarm but an entirely believable physician focused on her profession; a black police officer (Tina Lifford) who remembers McCaleb as a generous colleague and tries to cut him some slack in return; McCaleb’s idle and self-deprecating next-door neighbor in the harbor (Jeff Daniels), whom he hires as a temporary driver and baby-sitter for the slain woman’s son, but who fancies himself his partner; the distraught but helpful wife (Alix Koromzay) of the victim of another—or is it the same?—serial killer, whom McCaleb tracks down for questioning. Even McCaleb periodically slides into this category, when he isn’t dutifully living up to the Eastwood Legend: a man whose frailty and age keep undermining his exertions, unlike the superhero who knows no bounds. In a similar way, McCaleb slithers back and forth between old pro and amateur sleuth, working with and without his former law-enforcement connections.
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Written by Brian Helgeland
With Eastwood, Wanda De Jesus, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston, Tina Lifford, Igor Jijikine, Alix Koromzay, Dylan Walsh, and Paul Rodriguez.
