Another film I saw at last year’s London Film Festival. Which was in October. And I last wrote about a film I saw then in… January. SO IT GOES. I made no promises. Once again, something of a list and bear in mind this is a film that I saw once nearly 6 months ago (saying that though, I saw it 6 months ago and it made enough of an impression that I’m writing about it now).

• When I sat down in the cinema to see this film, I admit, I couldn’t remember what the hell I was seeing. It was a film called “Blood” – that much I knew from the ticket. Other than that? Not a clue. Blood is the kind of title that could mean anything, though in this case I think it refers to the familial relationships within the film. In the Q&A with the director Nick Murphy after the film, he described it as like a Greek tragedy and I’d agree that it has that kind of scale and timelessness. The fact that this is a drama involving policemen is pretty much secondary to the relationships between the characters and their reactions to events.
• The character development and the relationship development is well-paced. As it should be.
• To digress a bit, you know how in Romeo and Juliet, there’s that moment in Act 3, Scene 1 where it’s all a bit “HOLY COW” and everything changes? The impact of that varies from production to production and depends, I suspect, a bit on how familiar you are with the play. I’m guessing that if you know a bit about this film, but not necessarily all the detail and maybe not this point (even though it’s probably the pivotal moment in the film)…uh. Lost track there. MY POINT, now that I’ve got here, is that Blood has a moment where I could hear the entire audience kind of think “Holy S***” – it’s got that kind of impact. Which I really liked.
• MARK STRONG. Ok. This film has a lot of really good actors in it. A lot of them and all really good, who have done other work that I’ve really enjoyed. Paul Bettany gives the best performance that I’ve seen him give in like….anything I’ve seen him in (in fact, this pretty much confirms that I would want him to play John Constantine in a Hellblazer film). MARK STRONG THOUGH. I LOVE MARK STRONG. Well. Maybe not love him per se, but his work. My favourite thing is when he plays a normal person rather than an out-and-out villainous character (like in…Sherlock Holmes and…stuff…he’s good at it, but y’know). I think that sometimes it’s easy to forget that Strong can absolutely kill as a not-villain. Well, not literally ;).If this was a romantic comedy, I might have swooned. As it isn’t, I only swooned a bit at his character’s competence. That and that one scene where he’s wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Sorry. I have a pulse and he’s Mark Strong.
• What else? Well, last year I saw a heck of a lot of films, but out of the films that came out in 2012, that I saw, Blood was the most awesome. You can see my list here. Blood beat Red Tails, Avengers Assemble, The Hobbit, Dredd, Argo and…lots of other really good films (also, obvs, the not so good ones but whatevs). I gave it 4.5 stars out of 5 (I don’t really rate many things 5 out of 5) and my end of year thoughts were as follows:
  

  Yes, technically this film is released next year. I don’t care. In fact, this film is so good, I’ll probably go see again next year and put it high up on next year’s ratings too. The cast in this film is astounding. I love Mark Strong. I love Paul Bettany. They are both spot-on in this film (“spot-on” has pretty much become my go-to end of year saying). The relationships between the characters are rightly at the heart of this film and that’s what makes it so good. Forget that it’s a police drama. Forget the totally amazing HOLY COW moment. How the brothers related to each other and their father. How they related to their colleagues. Everything. Best film.

• Mark Strong and Paul Bettany, man. JUST LOOK AT THEM.
  

  It really doesn’t hurt that they’re nice to look at.

• Aside from Mr Strong and Mr Bettany being stone cold foxes, the setting is nice to look at too. So there’s that. If you needed something other than the plot and acting and all.

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