Typically for Eastwood, there are modest touches to savor.
Blood Work (2002)
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:147
Fresh:79
Rotten:68
Average Rating:5.6/10
Consensus: Blood Work is a routine, but competently made thriller marred by lethargic pacing.
Runtime: 1 hr 55 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis:
Someone’s got Terry McCaleb’s number. A veteran FBI profiler, McCaleb (CLINT EASTWOOD) is unrelenting in his pursuit of justice and unequalled in his success at tracking and catching murderers....
Someone’s got Terry McCaleb’s number. A veteran FBI profiler, McCaleb (CLINT EASTWOOD) is unrelenting in his pursuit of justice and unequalled in his success at tracking and catching murderers.
But as he closes in on his latest adversary – a psychopath dubbed “The Code Killer” by the media – McCaleb is felled by a massive heart attack and forced into early retirement.
Two years later, a beautiful stranger (WANDA De JESÚS) reveals a secret that compels McCaleb to re-examine his recovery: his life was saved by someone else’s death – the victim of a murder that remains unsolved.
Against the advice of his cardiologist (ANJELICA HUSTON) and with the help of an eager neighbor (JEFF DANIELS), McCaleb literally puts his life on the line to track down a murderer who has forced him to take this case personally.
He’s a heartbeat away from catching the killer.
Warner Bros. Pictures presents the suspense thriller Blood Work, a Malpaso Production starring CLINT EASTWOOD, JEFF DANIELS, WANDA De JESÚS, TINA LIFFORD, PAUL RODRIGUEZ, DYLAN WALSH and ANJELICA HUSTON.
Produced and directed by CLINT EASTWOOD from a screenplay by BRIAN HELGELAND, based on the best selling novel by MICHAEL CONNELLY, the film is executive produced by ROBERT LORENZ. The co-producer is JUDIE G. HOYT.
The editor is JOEL COX; the production designer is HENRY BUMSTEAD; the director of photography is TOM STERN; and the music is composed by LENNIE NIEHAUS.
Blood Work will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, an AOL Time Warner Company.
This film has been rated “R” by the Motion Picture Association of America for “violence and language.”
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Wanda De Jesus, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston
Starring: Clint Eastwood, Wanda De Jesus, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston, Tina Lifford, Paul Rodriguez, Dylan Walsh
Director: Clint Eastwood
Director: Clint Eastwood
Screenwriter: Brian Helgeland
Producer: Clint Eastwood
Composer: Lennie Niehaus
Studio: Warner Bros.
Reviews for Blood Work
Very silly: sometimes almost enjoyably so, often just in a tired way.
It's badly made, the plot is ridiculous and what's more, it confirms that Clint, like Woody Allen, is now much too old for love scenes of any kind.
Sure, Eastwood's made bad movies before, but as with his fellow great director-star Woody Allen, there's a feeling that this time the creative decline is irreversible.
Clint still has presence, but he now looks very elderly, with stunt doubles to do fights and running and, for all I know, walking and breathing too.
The cowboy can still conjure up a stoic maverick cop with credibility and keep you biting your nails through most of the film. Nice Work.
What Blood Work lacks in speed and surprise it almost makes up for in doughty professionalism.
The key to a good thriller is a sense of urgency, something that is sorely lacking on both sides of the camera in Blood Work, a characteristically muted late-period offering from Clint Eastwood.
It can be argued, I suppose, that Blood Work was designed from the outset not so much as a whodunit as a why-and-how-dunit, and here the film becomes metaphysically ingenious.
[The film] delivers the goods, in part because of Eastwood's iconic presence and in part because of Daniels' scene-stealing work in what could have been a hokey role.
A tidy, somewhat predictable package...solid entertainment for the mainstream audience
While we may doubt his physical capabilities, 72-year-old Clint Eastwood can still deliver as an action hero.
It's not difficult to spot the culprit early-on in this predictable thriller.
This is a murder mystery in which fitting together the pieces of the puzzle takes precedence over the solution.
Well made but uninvolving, Bloodwork isn’t a terrible movie, just a stultifyingly obvious one -- an unrewarding collar for a murder mystery.
A sleep-inducingly slow-paced crime drama with clumsy dialogue, heavy-handed phoney-feeling sentiment, and an overly-familiar set of plot devices.
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