Blood Work: Movie, DVD Review (2002)

Directed by Clint Eastwood, written by Brian Helgeland, 115 minutes, rated R.

(Originally published 2002)

Over the last decade, Clint Eastwood has kept his film career going by shrewdly embracing his age--now 72--and by selecting films that don't just capitalize on those years, but also thrive on them.

The actor’s "Blood Work," his 24th in the director’s chair, continues that trend with an exclamation point.

The film, from a script Brian Helgeland based on Michael Connelly’s best-selling novel, stars Eastwood as Terry McCaleb, an FBI profiler who drops from a heart attack in the opening chase scene and then, two years later, undergoes a heart transplant.

This isn’t exactly the Magnum-wielding, butt-kicking Dirty Harry we remember from the 1970s--and Eastwood seems liberated by it.

He’s aware of his age and his physical limitations in ways that other maturing action stars aren’t. When he courts comparisons to the cinematic icon he created three decades ago, he does so with a wink and a sense of humor, which steers him clear of the self-delusion recently afflicting Robert De Niro’s career and, for the past five years, nearly sunk Arnold Schwarzenegger’s.

Living on a boat in an L.A. marina, Terry is recuperating under the advisement of his doctor, Bonnie Fox (Anjelica Huston), when Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus) enters his life with a compelling reason why he should come out of retirement: The heart beating in his chest belonged to Graciella’s sister, who was murdered by a serial killer in a convenience-store robbery.

Would Terry be willing to help her find the murderer? Of course he would—and before you can say, "the plot just flatlined," Terry is tracking down a serial killer, Graciella is licking the scar on Terry’s chest, and Terry is making love to her with the considerable help of her sister’s heart, a bizarre twist that redefines what it means to be incestuous.

What’s great about "Blood Work" isn’t what it becomes—a preposterous television movie made by an A-list star—but its small touches, such as the scene in which Terry quietly shares a box of donuts with two detectives (Paul Rodriguez and Dylan Walsh), the way the film suggests Terry once had a fling with the black cop (Tina Lifford) who comes to help him in the investigation, and the moment Terry raises a shotgun to raise hell on a city street.

Eastwood doesn’t deny his audience the pleasure of watching him lock and load, but in this uneven movie, his weakest since "True Crime," he also doesn’t try to convince us that it’s as easy as it used to be.

Grade: B-