“Blood Ties,” a strong character study of two brothers in
the guise of a crime thriller, creates a panorama of broken lives trying to put
themselves back together. Director Guillaume Canet, who made the mesmerizing
2008 French mystery-thriller Tell No One,
sets his story in 1970s New York. Clive Owen plays Chris, a man of violence who
doesn’t have to issue warnings to make that known. All he has to do is walk
into a room and the threat of violence comes off him in waves. Chris’s brother,
Frank (Billy Crudup), is a veteran police officer and it’s clear that the
brothers don’t like each other. Chris is just getting out of prison after
serving time for murder. He wants to go straight, but he’s stuck in the
dead-zone of low-wage employment that goes nowhere. We know as soon as Chris
meets up with an old friend (Mark Mahoney) that Chris is going back to a life
of crime. So we have a lifelong crook with murder in his blood and a devoted
cop tied to him by blood. The
situation is primed to explode.
Meanwhile, Frank worms his way back into the life of his
ex-lover, played by the beautiful Zoe Saldana, who acts with a powerful,
teeth-baring fury. Marion Cotillard plays Chris’s ex-wife, who’s a junkie and a
prostitute and she gives this saddened woman a believable hard core. James Caan
plays the dying father to the brothers. At 127 minutes, “Blood Ties” ambles in
some places, but it’s also got some real action, including an explosive street
heist and a car chase through Manhattan. It builds to a payoff that’s pure
Hollywood and I’m not sure I agree with Canet’s ending. 3/25/14
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