director
Clint Eastwood
screenwriter
Brian Helgeland
based on
the novel by
Michael Connelly
producer
Clint Eastwood
cinematographer
Tom Stern
music
Lennie Niehaus
editor
Joel Cox
cast
Clint Eastwood (Terry McCaleb)
Jeff Daniels (Buddy Noone)
Wanda De Jesus (Graciella Rivers)
Tina Lifford (Jaye Winston)
Paul Rodriguez (Arrango)
Dylan Walsh (Waller)
Anjelica Huston (Dr. Bonnie Fox)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 111m
u.s.
release: 8/9/02
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official
website
other clint
eastwood films
reviewed on this website:
- absolute
power
- midnight
in the garden
of good and evil
- million
dollar baby
- mystic
river
- space
cowboys
- true
crime
- unforgiven
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The period of Clint Eastwood's
career that began with Unforgiven
ten years ago could accurately be called The Autumn Years. A
Perfect World, The Bridges of Madison County, Midnight
in the Garden of Good and Evil, Absolute
Power, True Crime, Space
Cowboys -- these are all about older men's concerns:
aging, paths not taken, the fragility of life. There certainly
hasn't been a Pink Cadillac or an Every Which Way But
Loose in this bunch, not even the one movie (In the Line
of Fire) Eastwood starred in but didn't direct during that
period. The brooding continues in Blood Work, probably
Eastwood's most successful and poignant Autumn work since Unforgiven.
Who knew that the guy who shot punks and goofed around with chimps
in the '70s, and shot more punks and goofed around with Burt
Reynolds in the '80s, would become the most consistently serious-minded
American director?
That's not to say Blood
Work is a foot-dragging exercise like Absolute Power,
pulp shunning its own pulpiness. The story, adapted by Brian
Helgeland from a Michael Connelly bestseller, twists and crackles
with a certain sadistic logic. FBI agent Terry McCaleb (Eastwood),
when we meet him, is being taunted by a serial killer, who likes
to scrawl "Catch me" in blood on the wall, along with
a numerical code nobody can crack. On his way out of the killer's
latest charnelhouse, McCaleb glimpses someone who may be the
culprit; McCaleb gives chase and suffers a heart attack. Cut
to two years later: McCaleb, with a transplanted heart beating
uneasily in his scarred chest (he touches it constantly, as preoccupied
with the raised line of flesh as a David Cronenberg hero), is
in retirement. A woman approaches him on his boat -- Graciella
Rivers (Wanda De Jesus), the sister of the dead woman whose heart
was donated to McCaleb. Graciella wants him to find her sister's
ski-masked killer, who shot her during a routine store robbery.
Or so it seems.
Against the better judgment
of his doctor (Anjelica Huston, tending to her stubborn patient
with tender exasperation; there's an interesting vibe here, since
Eastwood once played Huston's father in fictionalized form in
White Hunter, Black Heart), McCaleb takes the case. He
encounters resistance from two cops, the sarcastic Paul Rodriguez
and the lackadaisical Dylan Walsh. He finds pleasure in reunion
with higher-up Tina Lifford -- they were once involved, we gather,
and now team up to find the robber. He gets assistance from boat
neighbor Jeff Daniels, an amiable slacker who drives McCaleb
around for lack of a more exciting way to spend the day. And
he finds tentative love with Graciella, who also has a little
boy.
Blood Work balances text and subtext neatly.
We genuinely fear for McCaleb, even when he walks a little too
briskly; when he gets himself deeper into the case and faces
off against people who can do considerable damage even to men
half his age and twice the heart function, the movie is scary
on a level that few Eastwood thrillers have been. There's a weird
nightmare scene, oddly never followed up on, in which McCaleb
seems to see the murder from the point of view of the victim
whose heart is in his chest; it may be in the movie simply because
transplant patients do have such near-psychic experiences.
Smoothly assembled as always
(by now, Eastwood's team is a tight unit), and written with equal
attention to plot and character (it's probably Brian Helgeland's
most shapely script in that regard since L.A.
Confidential), this is Eastwood's sharpest filmmaking
since the gig that won him an Oscar. And age (he's 72 now) has
done wonders for Eastwood's acting. I hadn't noticed before Blood
Work how fragile and hoarse his voice is now -- maybe he
just accentuated it to play a heart patient, for whom every breath
is precious and not to be expended on talk. He looks and sounds
a little hardier at the end, and we feel he'll be happy enough
to go fishing and leave the violence of the world to younger
hands. Eastwood may be leaving it behind, too; he may only have
a few more Hollywood thrillers in him before he either retires
or steps behind the camera permanently, until he directs while
attached to an oxygen tank, just like the man he once played.
As a director, he shows no signs of fatigue; let's hope we have
him around for a long autumn.
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