Highly Overrated But Still Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The basic storyline is about a murderer who likes to play cat and mouse with an FBI agent. McCaleb is an aged agent retired after having a heart transplant but still dragged into action. Though scenario has almost no rationality the movie is entertaining enough for Dirty Harry fans (although McCaleb character doesn't have much common with Harry). McCaleb and Graciella characters are well developed but the two policemen who hate McCaleb (a worn-out cliche) are almost caricatured. Wanda De Jesus looks like a miscast for a woman who'd be interested in an old ailing man. The plot for solving the mystery about the identity of the murderer is laughable. The incentives of the murderer are even less clear except maybe that he's a nutcase. With the way things develop, the twist could sort of be guessed towards the end of story. The movie is a reminiscent of 70's police series on TV. An unambitious and ordinary work with no brainy edge but good for a couple of hours of diversion.

One of Eastwood's best and most underrated directorial efforts sees him as an ageing detective fitted with a new heart and haunted by his past. 'Blood Work (2002)' is sort of Eastwood's reflection on the genre that 'Dirty Harry (1972)' helped solidify, in the same way 'Unforgiven (1992)' was an interesting counterbalance to the 'Man With No Name' trilogy so seminal to the western. The picture is generally unglamorously gritty but occasionally slips into silliness and convention. The obvious yet nonsensical villainous reveal is ham-fisted and forced at best, being a wholly unnecessary addition to the book that comes across quite cheap. The flick withstands its few flaws thanks to how entertaining it is, with the fact that its hero feels as though he could keel over from a simple heart-attack any minute making it all the more exciting. 7/10

This movie has classic unreal serial killer plot, that alone makes it laughable. Serial killers toying with the people trying to track them is a hackneyed old plot line. But this one takes it to new heights. You see, our intrepid FBI profiler, Dirty Harry, almost nailed the serial killer, "The Code Killer" but had a heart attack during the cbase. But Harry winged the perp as the perp escaped. Well two years later Harry got a heart transplant, he gets approached by the pretty sister of the dead Hispanic woman whose heart saved his life. See her sister was murdered in a senseless looking store hold up. Now, a good human angle like that is a welcome plot element. So naturally, even though Dirty Harry is retired and is recovering from the heart transplant 2 months earlier, he agrees to help her find her sister's killer. This leaves a role for his cardiologist, Anjelica Houston, to get all concerned about his health and advice him to give it up. Then we are introduced with the amiable loafer who lives two boats down from him from the marina, the perennial nice white guy Jeff Daniels. Then we have an obnoxious local Hispanic cop, played by Paul Rodriguez, who is there to rail at and dog Harry's investigation. His performance sucked since his character's motivation was pointless. It was like "Here's a role, the bad officious cop who dogs our intrepid hero." So our serial killer spends two years laying low then decides he has to help his pursuer get a new heart. Which he does by cracking the blood bank system and finding someone with the same rare blood type as Harry's then kill them with a shot to the head so their heart can get harvested. Which makes no sense since Harry wasn't a G Man nor pursuing the Code Killer anymore. So was the killer counting on the dead heart donor's sister to find Harry then re-ignite the case? It made no sense. The killer actually physically meets Harry in disguise. Yet Harry, while physically frail but mentally sharp, doesn't notice that he is someone he knows? And why would the killer pull such a stunt except to move the plot along? Just too many dumb pointless plot elements can ruin a film

"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.