Blood Ties (2014)

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

As Good As It Gets

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

People just don't act like this. Perhaps in France where the writer/director is from, you stick with family members who are total losers, living in your little village with the one little well. Here in America, we have much more affiliation with friends and our co-workers than with any jerk relatives, even in 1970. Many families have spread across the country and hardly see each other any more.When I read the box office section, I misread the 46 thousand domestic gross as 46 million. So I do the highlight>copy>New Tab>Bookmarks>Box Office Mojo>paste>search>click, because Jeff Besos is too inconsiderate to put a link both ways even though he owns both websites. So then I see they spent 25 million and got 2 million back from sales in France. So I guess those European investors that wanted to make a killing in the American market lost almost everything. Sorry, c'est dommage.The sad thing is that if the editor or the money men deleted one scene, just one scene, this movie would be 100 times better. That scene was where the bad brother executes and entire family at that restaurant, for reasons unknown. Its awful hard to care about this sociopath jerk after that, and that scene was pretty early in the movie. With the time saved by taking that scene out, they could have put in a scene explaining how the crazy ticked-off ex husband escaped and was in pursuit of the cop brother. That would have made the ending more understandable, if no more sensible.A few news flashes for French directors. An ex-con that just got out might get mad at his ex-girlfriend when he is drunk and lonely late at night. He will not take a gun into Grand Central Station to execute the girl and her cop boyfriend. Next flash: street hoods in Brooklyn in the 1970s did not carry machine guns. Another flash: Some loser brother does not get out of prison and start killing people, robbing people, and running girls without getting his knees broken by the Italians, and Puerto Rican, and Koreans, and gosh knows how many other established criminal enterprises there were in that neighborhood.I think the director was insecure in his story and his actors, so he had to spray gratuitous drama wherever he could. This is so sad, since the actors and cinematography and music and editing were all so good. This movie showed me how little can be wrong to make a competent production into a flop.Just toning everything down would have made this a decent move. Make the bad brother a lovable rogue, not a complete sociopath. No executing his henchmen in the robbery or other absurdities. Cripes, robbers are not murderers, it is just such incoherent characterization. I kinda lost track of all the girls, forgetting who was an ex-wife or a sister, or a lover, or some random broad off the street. Less is more.And none of this love-you-hate-you-love-you-hate-you brother nonsense. Maybe make the cop brother get involved by busting brothels to make room for his brother's business, and of course, he would be in on the take. Its either that or make it a simple bad guy chased by the good cop with no family relationship, just good vs bad.Its dripping with drama, but its all cargo-cult drama. The director has never read or studied much less been in real situations in the 1970s. He has dreamed up this confabulated image based on all the other (bad) movies he has watched, so the behaviors and characters in the movie don't ring true. I think of the violence in Goodfellas, and there was the central murder of Billy Batts, and Joe Pesci shooting the kid, and him getting his just rewards in the end. But there was no willy-nilly killing sprees. Mobsters are about money, not violence. The violence happens but as a result of chasing the money. Killing a whole family? They have assets, take the restaurant like in Donnie Brasco, or any other type of hard-butt extortion. Its all about money and killing people does not get you your money back, and attracts way too much attention from law enforcement.The real pathos about this flick it that it could have been saved if they just cut out the absurd violence, and simplified the plot, and took out a few characters. They could have made back the budget in the editing room. A few re-shoots might have made it a profit-maker. What a sad sad waste.

BLOOD TIES is French director Guillaume Canet's remake of his own French film RIVALS, charting the stormy relationship between two brothers in the 1970s. One of them is a violent career criminal fresh out of prison, the other a hard-working and virtuous cop determined to do the right thing. Their contrasting professions mean they're on a collision course and yes, there will be blood.This isn't an intrinsically bad film. Certainly it has all of the elements to make for good cinema: a gritty realism, some strong performances from an ensemble cast, and perfect attention to detail in bringing the sleazy 1970s to life. The problem I have with it is that it just feels passe and all-too-familiar. The camera-work is sombre and the film has a downbeat atmosphere, but this has all been done time and time again and it makes the movie look clichéd. I want to see bright and vibrant films shot in original ways, not boring styles like the one on offer here.Clive Owen is very good, cast against type as a ruthless thug and shining in the part - he's scary. Billy Crudup, who rarely gets much of an opportunity in cinema, gives the best performance as his sympathetic brother. Marion Cotillard doesn't do much other than annoy the viewer a bit, although old timer James Caan is always a welcome presence. Mila Kunis and Zoe Saldana don't have much to do which is all for the better. There are some intense action scenes which are fairly shocking, although the film is spoilt by an all-too-familiar air of predictability which means you know exactly how it's going to play out.

I don't get it. We are supposed to be engaged by the complex relationship and moral dilemmas of these two brothers. But most of the other reviewers (and presumably the filmmakers) don't seem to be bothered by the fact that one of them is a murderous sociopath. This is kind of a deal breaker for me in terms of empathy. And yet, the same brother chooses to spare the life of a man who is an obvious existential threat to his family. Stupid script, hackneyed premise, overstuffed soundtrack, and ridiculous casting, including two lead female actresses (Cotillard and Kunis) who look so similar as to be occasionally confusing. Amateur foreign film making masquerading as a tribute to 70's American crime drama. Viewers would do better by sticking with the real thing, for instance: Mean Streets (art); The Friends of Eddie Coyle (slick); Superfly (genuine American trash). Any of these would be a much more fulfilling and enjoyable use of 2 hours.

At first I had doubts about this movie, the story took a long to time to build its self up, but goddamn was the wait worth it.Great performance from Clive Owen, great character development, great side characters and great story pacing. This movie is very relatable as I myself have a brother with who I always fight and yet at the end of the day we would take a bullet for each other. Blood Ties will keep you wanting to find out what will happen next throughout the movie and after all that is what we want from a Drama/Thriller.Gem of a movie 8/10.