BLOOD FATHER Review

There is nothing particularly new or even original about Blood Father and yet there are still signs of life within what would appear to be a corpse of a movie. Every actor over the age of fifty that once counted on their name above the title to bring in box office returns has attempted an action/revenge picture that can be traced back to Liam Neeson's success with Taken. Of course, that film worked because Neeson was playing somewhat against type and in a caliber of film he often didn't appear in. Neeson himself has ridden that success through two terrible sequels, a number of entertaining Jaume Collet-Serra flicks, and other B-movie actioners that have given the esteemed actor a brand new phase in his career (though that phase does seem to be coming to a close). We had the inevitable Nicolas Cage attempt in Stolen, Kevin Costner tried his hand with 3 Days To Kill, Sean Penn had The Gunman, Pierce Brosnan even took up the action mantle again to get in on the game with The November Man, and Mel Gibson naturally tried his hand with 2010's Edge of Darkness. Remember that one? It wasn't bad, really, but it certainly didn't match Neeson's success (hardly making back its $80 million production budget in its late January release slot) and it certainly wasn't enough to overshadow the storm of controversy Gibson garnered himself that year or four years prior. In that film Gibson played a homicide detective investigating the death of his activist daughter, but in Blood Father Gibson's character, much like in real life, has ended up on the other side of the law. An ex-con who only comes to reunite with his estranged seventeen year old daughter after she kills her drug dealer boyfriend. Gibson strangely enough plays Mike Link who we find at a point of acceptance with his shortcomings. It obviously parallels where many imagine Gibson is at with his career and life in general-Link's opening scene leading him to comment that, "You can't be a prick your whole life and then say never mind." While Blood Father may utilize our idea of current Mel Gibson to emphasize both the desperation and hope in its protagonist's plight the film outside the presence of Gibson is very much a generic action thriller that sees a dad in need of redemption kicking ass, taking names, and risking it all for the sake of his misguided daughter.

TUSK Review

There is instinctively something cool and edgy about a movie like Tusk. It is not that the final film is guaranteed to possess those anticipated qualities, but the prospect of the components coming together with the specific style and tone in which it has been composed allow it to exude an effortless cool factor. A factor that attracts people to become interested in it based purely on the feeling of wanting to be "in" on the conversation. There is somewhat of an exclusivity to the material because it is understood from the outset to be slightly off-kilter and a project only a certain kind of crowd or film fan will "get". With those kinds of expectations in check I walked into the latest horror/comedy mash-up from writer/director Kevin Smith (Clerks, Red State) with cautious optimism. I was excited for the material, it seemed more akin to Smith's talents of writing talkative, funny characters while meshing ridiculously with the horror genre he tried his hand at with his previous feature. While Red State was more a scary movie in the vein of gross-out violence than actual scares it had more style and directorial competency than almost anything Smith had done in the past. In Tusk, he leverages the genre he's experimenting in with the one he knows best and to that effect, he is on to something more interesting here. For the first fifty or so minutes of the film I was hooked as the beguiling premise was still allowed a shade of mystery, an air of tension as we waited to see what exactly our antagonist, Howard Howe (Michael Parks looking strangely like Bryan Cranston), planned to do with the main character of this story. It is when Smith is faced with the challenge of delivering on what the premise, trailer and spectacular poster promises that he fumbles toward the finish line. He goes weird, but not strange enough. It is gruesome, but not as detailed or disgusting as it easily could have been (especially given certain set-ups). It could be chocked up to the idea that Smith was trying to be more subtle with his allusions, but as Justin Long's Wallace Bryton likes to brag, his viewers like him real and raunchy and so he tries to be real raunchy. Smith has written by that rule his entire career and I doubt he would stop now considering he is as much in his element here as ever before.