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BLOOD WORK by Tom McCurrie
Screenwriters should always do the twist. And I don't mean Chubby Checker's ditty. I mean that old perennial, the plot twist. Nothing gives an audience more pleasure than a story throwing them a curveball.
In the best of all possible screenplays, plot twists should fool us while still making sense in the context of the story. That is, they should be both surprising and inevitable. Unfortunately, BLOOD WORK is not the best of all possible screenplays.
(Warning: Spoilers Ahead!)
Written by Brian Helgeland from a novel by Michael Connelly, BLOOD WORK spins the tale of Terry McCaleb (Clint Eastwood), a FBI agent who gets a heart attack while chasing down a mysterious killer. A transplant saves his keyster, and now he spends his days puttering around his very own S.S. Minnow.
Terry's retirement is rudely interrupted when Graciela Rivers asks him to solve her sister's murder. Why? ?Cause that's her heart beating in his chest. Now suitably guilt-tripped, Terry goes after the killer with the help of his goofy neighbor Buddy.
Okay, so we got MURDER, SHE WROTE meets the Man with No Name. Nothing truly special when it comes down to it, and that obviously had director-star Clint worried.
What to do? Bring in a plot twist. After all, plot twists have rescued passable movies before, ranging from THE CRYING GAME to THE SIXTH SENSE. Before the twist, these movies were so-so time-killers and that's it. After the twist, these same movies became instant classics -- people went back to see them again and again as if they were paying tribute to Caesar.
So what's the twist in BLOOD WORK? After almost two hours of huffing and puffing, we discover the killer of Graciela's sister was the same guy Terry was chasing at the beginning of the picture. It seems this Hannibal wannabe liked being chased so much he iced Graciela's sister so Terry could get a new ticker. Once he recovered, the hunt could begin again.
But wait, the screenwriter says, there's more. This killer is none other than Terry's next door neighbor, Buddy!
Not bad, guys, not bad. But let's give it the test. Is the twist inevitable? Most definitely. Since the "friendship" between Terry and the killer is established from the get-go, the twist certainly makes sense in the context of the story.
But is it surprising? No freakin' way. Unlike THE USUAL SUSPECTS and THE SIXTH SENSE, the twist in BLOOD WORK is as surprising as the Yankees making it to the World Series.
Why? First of all, there simply aren't enough red herrings to go around. Whodunits need a slew of them if we're to avoid guessing the murderer by the second reel. BLOOD WORK has two at best. The first one is a Russian who uses his fists like a hammer and sickle on anyone he doesn't like. As we all know, the first red herring is almost never the killer, especially if he's such an obvious creep like this one.
The second red herring is a strait-laced dude named Lockridge, but this guy is such a blink-and-you'll-miss-him character that there's no way he could be the killer. To make someone this dramatically undernourished the bad guy would be a total cheat on the audience.
So who are we left with? Terry's gal-pal Graciela. Nope. Terry's doctor. Nope. Terry's weirdo next door neighbor. Circle gets the square! Gee, that was easy.
It doesn't help that the Buddy character seems superfluous, almost tacked on to the rest of the script. His sole purpose is to drive the still-recovering Terry around and ask enough stupid questions to get across the exposition. Almost immediately you start to wonder -- why does this negligible character have such a big part? Then the alarm bells go off: Bad Guy alert!
Finally, the pal turning out to be the baddie is beyond cliche -- not counting THE USUAL SUSPECTS it's been used in MISSION:IMPOSSIBLE, THE ART OF WAR, MINORITY REPORT, yadda, yadda, yadda. The only thing more predictable is death and taxes.
Of course, guessing the twist wouldn't matter if it took us the whole movie to do it. Trouble is, it takes about twenty minutes, including credits. That means we have to wait another hour for Terry to catch on to what we already know. And it's hard to root for a protagonist who's stupider than you are.
Because of this frustrating delay, the picture's other flaws weigh more heavily: the leaden pace, the talky dialogue, the tiresome shots of Clint bedding down with women half his age (what's next, Clint locking lips with Kirsten Dunst?). All this would have been tolerable if the script delivered on its twist. But alas, the Man with No Name has given us the Movie with No Twist.
So if you want to throw your audience a curveball, make sure it's both surprising and inevitable. For when it comes to twists, you can't have one without the other.
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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