Blood Work (2002)

Blood Work

While the plot deviates a bit from the book, if anything, it seems more realistic. Eastwod and Houston are well cast and at their best. April 6, 2008

Solid detective movie with a heart

A Clint Eastwood movie with a detective that isn't Dirty Harry.
It has some good twists on organ donation and blood type.
I really doubt the writers know anything at all about the subject
as an A negative Mexican is probably pure fiction...O positive maybe.
I thought at first it was the doctor hiring a hit man to get hearts for her patients ( might be a nice psychopathic twist), but it was just a crazy serial killer in the end. March 18, 2008

Blood Work milks the clock and goes home early.

Blood Work makes for a different kind of detective story when compared to films that are similar in both setting and intriguing storyline. With Eastwood as an aging and retired FBI agent coming back into the trenches to capture a killer, the backdrop of his heart transplant and the connection between himself, the victims and ultimately the suspect makes for an interesting film. The problem with Blood Work is that it is almost too carefree and ultimately pretty low on suspense. Jeff Daniels is enjoyable as the "guy next door" at the boat docks, always seeming a tad creepy but still able to cover it up with lots of friendly atmosphere. With his character's lackadaisical attitude butted up against the fierce, determined ambition of Eastwood's, one might find this as the most enjoyable aspect of the whole film.

Blood Work has a few surprises and some fun guessing games, and although it is a film that almost takes more time to delve into Clint's character than the many other themes that seem to fall short, it is still a good one to view if one doesn't have anything else to do.
December 15, 2007

Clint may be old, but he till has all of the right moves!!!!

As a fan of the "Terry McCaleb" series by Michael Connelly, I didn't have a problem with Clint Eastwood portraying the F.B.I. profiler. Though there might be an age difference, I thought Eastwood captured the character of the no-nonsense, tough-as-nails McCaleb perfectly. In the film version of the novel, Blood Work, McCaleb has a heart attack while chasing a vicious murderer known as the Code Killer through the back allies of Los Angeles. The movie then picks up two years later and sixty days after McCaleb has finally had a heart transplant. Still recovering from the operation, McCaleb is approached by Graciella Rivera (the sister of the donor, Gloria, whose heart was given to him) to find the man who killed her beloved sister. Perhaps out of guilt at being the receiver of the heart and against his better judgment, McCaleb agrees to look into the case. He really doesn't expect to find out much, knowing that the police have probably taken the case as far as it can go. All of that, however, changes as he starts to put the pieces of the puzzle together. What had seemed at first to be a routine homicide ends up being something far darker and more violent than even our retired profiler could suspect. He soon discovers a connection between Gloria's death and the murder of a man that happened just two weeks before hers. This leads him to eventually believe that the Code Killer is back and that Gloria was killed so that he might have her heart and once again enact the battle between good and evil as the serial killer refers to it. You see, the Code Killer hasn't finished with McCaleb and wants him back in the game. The only thing the Code Killer hasn't figured into the equation is that though McCaleb's fragile, he's not as nice as he used to be and intends to put this asshole down the hard way with everything he's got. The ending isn't going to be pretty.

As the director and star of Blood Work, Clint Eastwood proves that he's still at the top of his game. He keeps everything simple by casting good actors (Jeff Daniels, Angelica Huston, Wanda De Jesus, and Paul Rodriguez) who know exactly what to bring to a performance, getting each shot with just one or two takes, and playing Terry McCaleb as a real character who's in his senior years with a serious health condition. The pace of the movie may be slow, but that's to be expected. Neither Eastwood, nor McCaleb, are exactly young men in their prime. Eastwood plays the role the way it should be done, taking it nice and easy, until the final confrontation occurs and he can do a "Dirty Harry" on the bad guy. I love it at the end when the Code Killer thinks that he's won the game and walks confidently away from McCaleb, only to be shot by our slightly tarnished hero. That's definitely something Dirty Harry would do. Though there are a couple of things that aren't explained in the movie such as how the killer is able to tap into the organ donor's website to get the necessary information or how the killer is able to be parked down the street from the convenience store for the shotgun shootout when he's actually supposed to be doing something else, which I can't give away without telling you who he is. The shootout was great, but the timing wasn't right and left a big plot hole for me to wonder about. It makes me think that a scene was cut out of the movie. Still, Blood Work is an excellent, suspenseful film with Eastwood doing what he does best. It's one I can watch again and again without getting bored, and that says a lot for a movie.
January 2, 2007

Not the Book

Don't expect Connelly's Blood Work in this movie. The story starts out nearly word for word from Connelly's book, however the Eastwood McCaleb is probably a good 30 years older than Connelly's McCaleb - what a disappointment. I cringed every time I saw Eastwood run or fire a gun. At one point in the movie, McCaleb and cop Winston recklessly blast out all of the windows of a speeding car for no apparent reason and then act as if nothing happened. Huh? Somewhere along the line, the movie diverges drastically from the book to the point where the real murderer turns out to be a completely different character. Too bad so much of the original book was lost in translation. December 21, 2006

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