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Eastwood's strong performance, direction betrayed by messy ending
Clint Eastwood in 'Blood Work'
Warner Bros.
His leathery skin and granite looks match his raspy whisper as never before.
In one of the most accomplished performances among his 44 leading roles (omitting walk-ons such as "Revenge of the Creature" and fly-bys such as "Tarantula"), he acts Terry McCaleb, an FBI profiler who is being baited by the serial "Code Killer."
"McCaleb, catch me," scrawls the murderer in blood on walls, adding a numerical code.
Terry spots the killer once - or thinks he does - and chases the hooded figure for blocks, finally pausing at a Cyclone fence for a nearly fatal coronary.
Armed with a new heart two years later, but retired, he's urged back onto the job, or at least into unlicensed private practice, by Graciela Rivers (Wanda De Jesus).
He harbors the heart of her murdered sister, a twist on the heart-transplant romance in "Return to Me."
Does he have a choice but to investigate?
Former FBI colleague Jaye Winston (Tina Lifford) helps a little, but police detective Ronaldo Arrango (Paul Rodriguez) needles him throughout - a mosquito bitchily working out issues of pique and jealousy.
Cardiologist Bonnie Fox (Anjelica Huston) is furious because of the risk involved.
But Buddy Noone (Jeff Daniels), the loafer who lives on the boat docked next to Terry's in Long Beach, likes tagging along.
Terry no longer drives, so Buddy can play chauffeur.
Unlike most modern murder mysteries in which sleuthing is minimized and the personal stuff dull or nonexistent, the screenplay by Brian Helgeland ("Payback," "L.A. Confidential") gets almost everything right.
Based on the 1998 novel by Michael Connelly, "Blood Work" is a good old-fashioned detective yarn that unfolds methodically as Terry uses a followable path of bread crumbs to the killer's toes.
Almost as impressively, Eastwood, directing for the 23rd time, builds Terry's vulnerability to age and pulse.
He fortifies himself regularly, swigging pills and juice, and absorbs indignities as never before.
You've never seen Eastwood, who is 72, this human. He's acting out the dynamics of a life phase that never occurred to his "Dirty Harry" Callahan or to Steve McQueen's Frank "Bullitt."
Helgeland also draws multiple threads of symbiosis, although he - or Eastwood - backs away from the implications of the ultimate disclosure as though the veteran actor were uneasy with the meaning of the last reel. He arrives only to say, we're not going there.
Eighty percent of "Blood Work" is remarkably astute. And then, logic and tension collapse through a succession of missteps.
Even if the final passages work for you, driving home you realize how carefully "Blood Work" conceals its contrivances. You can't double-back and challenge the first act until you reach the finale.
I can think of no way to make the ending work as written, cast, acted and directed.
It's well worth the trip to that point, though, and to see a veteran superstar wear his years so vigorously and with such mastery of craft.
| 'Blood Work' |
Director: Clint Eastwood
Stars: Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels, Angelica Huston
MPAA Rating: R, for violence and language
