Blood Ties (15)
Directed by Guillaume Canet.
Starring Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana and James Caan. 127 mins.
I suppose it is legitimate for a film set in New York in 1974 to begin with a corny old joke* I can remember from primary school. It is a period piece after all. But it is an unfortunate way to begin a film made up entirely of old ideas.
Last week God's Pocket was a lively sprint round a well worn neighbourhood. This week Blood Ties offers us a tale of two brothers, one a cop and the other just outta prison and finding it hard to go straight in 70s New York. It's a route so tired, so cliched, so utterly without innovation and insight it should relocate to the London borough of Hackneyed. God's Pocket invigorated its tired tale with brash spurts of black comedy but Blood Ties hammers away at its melodramatic themes with a straight face and drags it feet doing so. Its big gimmick is some epic miscasting – everybody except Crudup and Caan look entirely out of place. Zaladana and Kunis would be credible if the period was this time last week. You may be able to buy Cotillard as a junkie whore but not that Clive Owen is the fruit of Caan's loins. Owen (who to be fair may not have had a lot of prep time after he was cast when Mark Wahlberg dropped out) plods through the film with an heroic disregard for accent or period, like he was an extra who'd been asked to block some scenes for the director while the real star was stuck in traffic.
*It's the joke that ends with an Irishman stabbing himself with a fork and telling the cannibal tribe, “You're not making a canoe out of me.” In the film the final line is assigned to an Italian and rather than reveal him to be a bit stupid it is implied that this is rather clever of him.
Directed by Guillaume Canet.
Starring Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, Zoe Saldana and James Caan. 127 mins.
I suppose it is legitimate for a film set in New York in 1974 to begin with a corny old joke* I can remember from primary school. It is a period piece after all. But it is an unfortunate way to begin a film made up entirely of old ideas.
Last week God's Pocket was a lively sprint round a well worn neighbourhood. This week Blood Ties offers us a tale of two brothers, one a cop and the other just outta prison and finding it hard to go straight in 70s New York. It's a route so tired, so cliched, so utterly without innovation and insight it should relocate to the London borough of Hackneyed. God's Pocket invigorated its tired tale with brash spurts of black comedy but Blood Ties hammers away at its melodramatic themes with a straight face and drags it feet doing so. Its big gimmick is some epic miscasting – everybody except Crudup and Caan look entirely out of place. Zaladana and Kunis would be credible if the period was this time last week. You may be able to buy Cotillard as a junkie whore but not that Clive Owen is the fruit of Caan's loins. Owen (who to be fair may not have had a lot of prep time after he was cast when Mark Wahlberg dropped out) plods through the film with an heroic disregard for accent or period, like he was an extra who'd been asked to block some scenes for the director while the real star was stuck in traffic.
*It's the joke that ends with an Irishman stabbing himself with a fork and telling the cannibal tribe, “You're not making a canoe out of me.” In the film the final line is assigned to an Italian and rather than reveal him to be a bit stupid it is implied that this is rather clever of him.
