Let's just get a few adjectives out of the way: craggy, suave, laconic and very, very cool.
They all still apply to Clint Eastwood, who has rarely veered from his self-contained, quietly macho persona during a nearly 50-year career. "Blood Work" is the 45th movie in which Eastwood has starred, the 24th he has directed, and it stands as yet another solid, if not narratively elegant, example of what we've come to expect from a Clint Eastwood picture. As the film historian David Thomson wrote about Eastwood's "In the Line of Fire," it's "mainstream entertainment, beautifully cast and played, suspenseful – and ridiculous." Viewers will enjoy "Blood Work" in direct proportion to their ability to overlook the latter.
Clint Eastwood and Anjelica Huston star in "Blood Work."
(Warner Brothers)
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Eastwood plays FBI profiler Terry McCaleb, an expert in serial killers who has a heart attack while chasing a suspect. Most of "Blood Work" takes place two years later, just after McCaleb has retired and undergone a heart transplant. This is where the first major suspension of disbelief kicks in: While recovering on his boat, McCaleb is approached by a beautiful woman named Graciela (Wanda De Jesus) to take a freelance job finding the man who killed her sister – whose heart is now beating in McCaleb's chest.
McCaleb's dip back into his old life will inevitably produce strains, not only physically but emotionally: Soon enough he is crossing paths with his nemesis, the same serial killer who taunted him into the heart-stopping chase two years earlier. As the cat-and-mouse game ensues, alert viewers will figure out this twist early on, but that shouldn't stop them from enjoying Eastwood and his terrific supporting cast as they put the mystery through its procedural paces.
Taking a cue from the director with whom he had the most fruitful relationship, Don Siegel, Eastwood directs "Blood Work" in subdued, straightforward style; there are times when the movie even has that washed-out look of 1970s-era crime thrillers. (As always, he graces the film with a classic jazz score, adding to its timeless feel.) The dialogue, by Brian Helgeland as adapted from the Michael Connelly novel, is strictly workmanlike: People say things like "I'm looking for Terry McCaleb" and "You're looking at him."
But for all the cliches, not to mention myriad contrivances, coincidences and convenient mistakes on which the plot hinges, the actors manage to make it all seem plausible enough. Eastwood deserves kudos for casting three fabulous-looking mature women as his leading ladies: De Jesus, Tina Lifford, who plays McCaleb's former colleague and old flame, and Anjelica Huston as McCaleb's cardiologist prove that glamour and sensuality have nothing to do with age. The appearance of Jeff Daniels as McCaleb's layabout neighbor and sidekick at times suggests that the film could have been called "Dumb and Dapper," but Daniels's performance takes on added dimension throughout a movie in which not everything is what it seems.
Eastwood, whose signature gravelly growl now sounds as if he's whispering through steel wool, is not a great actor, but he is a wise one. He knows his limits, and he gracefully works within them, never grasping or succumbing to vanity. Aside from a love scene that should have been reconsidered, he once again proves in "Blood Work" that his instinct for creating efficient, adult, mainstream entertainment is virtually unerring. He's still a class act, not to mention craggy, suave, laconic and very, very cool.
BLOOD WORK (R, 111 minutes) – Contains violence and language. At area theaters.
