STAR RATING: ***** Saturday Night **** Friday Night *** Friday Morning ** Sunday Night * Monday Morning
When cop Michael Savion's (Luke Goss) small time hood brother David (Ryan Donowho) is killed by mob boss Elias (Tamer Hassan) for suspected betrayal, he takes it on himself to dispense justice after ineffectual assurances by Detective Hardwick (50 Cent.) After making a name for himself around town, taking down some hard nut local gang bangers, he finds himself invited into Elias's inner circle and asked to work for him. Elias sets his sights on turning Savion into his fighting champ in an up-coming underground fight to determine which criminal empire rules, and where Savion will strike the spring in his tail.
Action is one of my favourite genres, easily one of the most entertaining and releasing of the movie art forms. But, defend it though I might, even I couldn't argue with the point that it certainly isn't a genre known for needing your brain or particularly your imagination to much extent. It's unique in the sense that any half wit writer can think up the most lazy, formulaic idea and, as long as it delivers on the 'action' quotient and gives the audience what they've come to see, it can get away with this. For a lot of action films this does work but, while Blood Out is not quite a disaster, the laziness of the story and the join the dots script ends up making it more of a chore to sit through than a simple piece of violent, brainless fun.
Debut director Jason Hewitt doesn't seem to have any history of directing music videos, but the frenetic style he uses to shoot the film and tell the story leaves you thinking this might have been a fair assumption to make. The plot is not only simplistic but wavey and slightly incoherent, and coming in at just under an hour and a half, you've still been clock watching to see when it might be over simply on account of how bored you've ended up getting with it. None of the cast can give especially great performances, because all the roles are so generic and one dimensional, from Goss as the 'man out to avenge loved one' good guy to Hassan's cardboard villain. A host of supporting stars, including 50 Cent, Val Kilmer and Vinnie Jones (an interesting appearance, given his and Hassan's reported fisticuffs bust up in which he came off the loser) appear in what end up feeling like minor roles.
I guess if you want a simple violent, undemanding action film, Blood Out might do. But this story has been done so many times before and so much better, you might be wiser to search around. Try under Chuck Norris. **
