Blood Ties - 3 smiles

“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