Truly Dreadful Film

People are voting emotionally.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

Blistering performances.

How stupid do you have to be to not appreciate the difference between getting shot and stubbing your toe? However stupid that is, that's how stupid these filmmakers are. Characters in New Blood get shot, they get shot multiple times, they even get blasted by shotguns…and they essentially just rub some dirt on it and walk it off.But these aren't just dumb filmmakers. They're dumb filmmakers who watched The Usual Suspects, so viewers of this movie will be repeatedly subjected to pathetic attempts at mimicking the things in that movie by a writer and director who clearly didn't understand what they saw. As wonderful as films like The Usual Suspects are, ostentatiously clever movies like that spawn the absolute worst knock-offs in all of cinema.This story is about a father named Alan (John Hurt), his estranged and criminally inclined son named Denny (Nick Moran) and his only briefly glimpsed daughter named Emma "Danielle Webb). Emma needs a heart transplant and one night Denny shows up, shot in the gut, and offers to donate his heart to Emma if his dad will do him the ultimate favor. It seems Denny and his thug buddies were hired by a mythically violent gangster named Mr. Ryan (Eugene Robert Glazer) to help kidnap a rich man. The kidnapping goes wrong and, for reasons that don't hold up under any scrutiny, Denny needs Alan to impersonate the rich man and allow himself to be killed. Because Denny agrees to let himself die of his wound and give his heart to Emma, Alan agrees to sacrifice himself. But when Alan finds himself among Denny's fellow kidnappers, he learns that Denny may not have told him the real story and Alan's sacrifice might be for Denny's benefit and not Emma's. The plot kind of falls apart there and there's no actual logic to much that happens after that point.When I think about the simple, essential story of New Blood, I can see what would have attracted people to this project. The concept of a father and son, separated by years of anger, resentment and neglect, giving up their lives for each other, not out of love but for some advantage…you can feel the raw, emotional conflict inherent in that set up. But that conflict never becomes much more than inherent. I don't know if these filmmakers didn't understand the heart of their story or didn't know how to tell it, but they largely ignore it and fill up the movie with a bunch of other crap. The film makes a big deal about how Denny's thug buddies are the closest thing to real family he has, but nothing is ever done with those characters to make them worth a damn to the viewer. Then we get some stuff in the middle of the story about Hellman (Joe Pantoliano), the guy in charge of the kidnap plot. Hellman is supposed to be this awesomely frightening guy, but he's one of the least scary characters I've ever encountered. Firstly, he looks ridiculous with a pencil-thin mustache and a Ben Franklin hairdo. Secondly, I don't know what the heck Pantoliano was going for with his performance but whatever it was, it doesn't work. It's almost like he's intentionally making this supposedly intimidating guy the least intimidating he can to try and fake out the audience or something. And toward the end of the movie we get this stuff with Leigh (Carrie-Anne Moss), the accountant for Mr. Ryan and a woman who schemes as easily as she breathes. The film suddenly becomes all about this con game being played by Denny, Alan and Leigh, which leads up to the most sublimely silly reaction to getting shot I think I've ever seen in a legitimate motion picture. New Blood spends so much time and energy on these tangents that it never manages to put any meat on the bones of its basic father-son conflict.For all that, though, what truly drags this movie down into the gutter where you sit there and wonder why you're watching it is the acting of Nick Moran. I'm not sure I've seen this guy in anything else, so perhaps he's done better work in other pictures. Here, though, he is the proverbial block of wood. He makes Keanu Reeves look like Laurence Olivier. The dude can't even convincingly convey the pain of being shot in the gut, yet he's largely the main character in the film. John Hurt's work as Alan, even though the character is relentlessly passive and does virtually nothing for the majority of the movie, still blows Moran away every second they're on screen together. As weak as the rest of the storytelling is, if the guy playing Denny had had even rudimentary charisma, you might have been able to overlook some of it.Don't be fooled by the presence of Hurt, Pantoliano and Moss in the cast. New Blood is a bad, bad movie.

Bad. In the words of my nemesis (Roger Ebert), I hated, hated, hated this movie. I wanted to like this movie. A good cast (Joe Pantliano, Carrie Anne Moss, the guy from Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels) can't save this turkey. Bad acting and a dumb script combined with a total absence of plot motion. Don't waste two hours of your life.

This was not a terrible film. It was merely a poor execution of current noir film styles. The pacing was slow. The script was melodramatic in places. It is unfortunate that the dramatic pause has become an overused device. The lighting was film school quality at best. Just because the subject matter is "dark" doesn't mean that I should be unable to see the actors. The editor seemed to be overly entertained by nifty but superfluous techniques. Much like a verbal pause, the film pause can become tiresome and overused. I cannot blame the actors for their flat delivery, I have seen them all in other films giving dynamic and believable performances. If the actors were doing what they were told, then we have to blame the director. The plot was very contrived. It took elements from a number of hit movies (Usual Suspects and City on Fire among them) and smothered them. A number of clichés were employed in an attempt to make us care about the characters. They all failed. In a three dimensional world, two dimensional plots get you nowhere.

This movie looks a lot like the great movie Lock stock & two smoking barrels. The brilliant script is it´s strength and it throws you from one conclusion to another several times. Also, the acting is superb. Nick Moran, just to mention one of all the stars this film features, has never been better. Those of you who liked "Lock Stock..." must run and see this as soon as it hits the screens! (I had the opportunity to see it in the International filmfestival of Stockholm)