Blood Ties begins with a title card that says “Brooklyn, New York 1974” and is immediately followed with a character putting on a record of Ace Frehley’s version of “New York Groove,” which any KISS fan will tell you wasn’t released until 1978. Yet it’s the perfect song to set up this pitch-perfect 1970s crime drama, which nails the style even if the substance is lacking.
Frank (Billy Crudup) is a New York City cop who finds himself struggling with three personal difficulties. First, his former girlfriend Vanessa (Zoe Saldana) whom he still loves is involved with a criminal he is currently investigating, his father (James Caan) is having health problems, and, most significantly, his brother Chris (Clive Owen) is being released from prison. Frank and Chris never had the closest relationship, but their obviously opposite stations in life put them immediately at odds. What makes it even more difficult is that Chris finds it impossible to get back on the straight and narrow — the mother of his children Monica (Marion Cotillard) is a drug-addicted prostitute, he cannot land a decent job because of his past, and his former associates want him to fall back in his old life.
Filmmaker James Gray has built his reputation on bold New York City-based dramas like Little Odessa, The Yards, We Own the Night and his last film, The Immigrant (check out my review here). However, this is Gray’s first film in which he only serves as a screenwriter and executive producer. The film is instead directed by French actor/director Guillaume Canet, who makes his English-language directorial debut with this film, and is a remake of the 2008 French drama Les liens du sang, which Canet starred in.
Billy Crudup is a very talented actor who rarely gets lead roles. On that alone this would be worth a watch, but to be honest his character quickly becomes overshadowed by Owen’s. But that doesn’t mean Owen’s character becomes the focus because this movie has an overflow of characters. For example, in the above plot description I neglected to mention that Mila Kunis plays Owen’s character’s girlfriend, Natalie, who is yet another lead character. The twenty year age difference between Kunis and Owen is really noticable, especially since Kunis has always looked younger than her age. But ultimatlely Kunis doesn’t have a really big part in the narrative toward the end of the film, which is surprising since her character is seemingly established as being an important character. Yet hers is not the only character that seems underdeveloped. With a half-dozen main characters and about a half-dozen supporting characters, the 127 minute runtime of Blood Ties actually seems both too short and dragged out. In fact, I think this script would have been better served as a TV mini-series to fully explore these relationships.
So why do I say it feels dragged out if I wanted to be longer? Because even with several engaging characters, the film seems to just skim the surface of them in order to fit the entire plot in the runtime. In fact, thank goodness that the film uses several cliche crime drama archtypes so viewers are able to feel connected to these characters based on similar characters from similar movies.
The film has such a muddy, washed-out filthy look characteristic of 1970s crime films that Marion Cotillard, Mila Kunis, and Zoe Saldana all look a bit world-weary. That is a credit to cinematographer Christophe Offenstein, who makes sure that this film looks like a spiritual successor to The French Connection and other gritty 1970s crime dramas. That fits with the movie’s general reminiscent feel, as does the ending, which is a bit too reminiscent of the ending of Carlito’s Way for comfort.
Considering the talent involved, I wanted Blood Ties to be much more engaging. It’s a good film, but plays it too close to what you’d expect to stand out in its genre.
Rating: Though it’s stylistically perfect, the story is both too familiar and too convoluted to make a real impression (5/10).
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