"Blood Work" stars Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels, Wanda de Jesus, Angelica Huston, and Tina Lifford.
Eastwood plays Terry McCaleb, an FBI man who chases a suspect, shoots him, and has a near-fatal heart attack. In the next scene, we see him with his doctor (Huston). He's had a heart transplant. He lives on a boat, and he is visited by a woman (de Jesus) who asks him to look into the murder of her sister. He explains that he's retired. She informs him that he has her sister's heart.
I was entertained by this film, I love Clint Eastwood, and I love many of his films. This wasn't one of his better ones, but he was good. The plot -- the motive for the killings -- left me cold, as the execution of it seemed chancy, and the reason for it bizarre. Also there was the typical casting error that's always made. I never know why. Really spoils it.
I'm sure I'm going to sound like some crazed aggressive feminist, which I assure you I'm not, but here we go again. We've got Clint Eastwood, in his seventies here, chasing people after a heart transplant. He's like Superman. When he was 67, in Absolute Power, he was jumping out of windows. No one questions it, just like no one questions Harrison Ford or any other elderly male actor having costars half their age and still playing leads. Yet women stars are sidelined because of age.
The age is now higher, and yes, if you're Judy Dench or Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, you too can star in a movie. And yes, it's better than it was. It's not good enough. We're lucky that there are people who want to write and produce scripts for these stars, but look at everyone else - Angelica Huston, Sally Field, Meg Ryan, all the way back, whose sell-by date relegates them to character roles.
Eastwood was too old for Bridges of Madison Cunty, he was too old for Absolute Power, and he was too old for this. I don't love him any less; I grew up watching him. But the movie world tells us it's natural for your mother to be around her son's age (Angela Lansbury-Laurence Harvey), 14 years older than your daughter (Kate Nelligan-Sandra Bullock), a girlfriend to someone, and then, ten years later, the same actor's mother (Tom Hanks-Sally Field).
Once on TV, Kaye Ballard asked a casting agent why a 30-year-old is sometimes cast as the mother of a 29-year old male. The agent said she didn't know, but her husband was 31 and the woman playing his mother on a show was 32. Go figure. There's a 28-year difference between Wanda de Jesus and Clint Eastwood. I want to see Susan Sarandon on screen with her romantic lead 28 years younger. We'd never stop hearing about it.
Eastwood plays Terry McCaleb, an FBI man who chases a suspect, shoots him, and has a near-fatal heart attack. In the next scene, we see him with his doctor (Huston). He's had a heart transplant. He lives on a boat, and he is visited by a woman (de Jesus) who asks him to look into the murder of her sister. He explains that he's retired. She informs him that he has her sister's heart.
I was entertained by this film, I love Clint Eastwood, and I love many of his films. This wasn't one of his better ones, but he was good. The plot -- the motive for the killings -- left me cold, as the execution of it seemed chancy, and the reason for it bizarre. Also there was the typical casting error that's always made. I never know why. Really spoils it.
I'm sure I'm going to sound like some crazed aggressive feminist, which I assure you I'm not, but here we go again. We've got Clint Eastwood, in his seventies here, chasing people after a heart transplant. He's like Superman. When he was 67, in Absolute Power, he was jumping out of windows. No one questions it, just like no one questions Harrison Ford or any other elderly male actor having costars half their age and still playing leads. Yet women stars are sidelined because of age.
The age is now higher, and yes, if you're Judy Dench or Helen Mirren or Meryl Streep, you too can star in a movie. And yes, it's better than it was. It's not good enough. We're lucky that there are people who want to write and produce scripts for these stars, but look at everyone else - Angelica Huston, Sally Field, Meg Ryan, all the way back, whose sell-by date relegates them to character roles.
Eastwood was too old for Bridges of Madison Cunty, he was too old for Absolute Power, and he was too old for this. I don't love him any less; I grew up watching him. But the movie world tells us it's natural for your mother to be around her son's age (Angela Lansbury-Laurence Harvey), 14 years older than your daughter (Kate Nelligan-Sandra Bullock), a girlfriend to someone, and then, ten years later, the same actor's mother (Tom Hanks-Sally Field).
Once on TV, Kaye Ballard asked a casting agent why a 30-year-old is sometimes cast as the mother of a 29-year old male. The agent said she didn't know, but her husband was 31 and the woman playing his mother on a show was 32. Go figure. There's a 28-year difference between Wanda de Jesus and Clint Eastwood. I want to see Susan Sarandon on screen with her romantic lead 28 years younger. We'd never stop hearing about it.