Clint
Eastwood personifies a police officer who relentlessly pursues
criminals. In Blood Work, which
he directs at the age of 72 based on the novel by Michael
Connelly, he risks his life in the role of elderly FBI agent
Terry McCaleb. When the film begins, he is at a crime scene
where his name and a nine-digit number are crayoned onto cardboard
as a serial killer's calling card. On leaving the scene, he
spots someone suspicious, who suddenly runs, and chases him
without backup until he has a heart attack. He then retires
from the FBI for medical reasons, buys a boat, makes his home
in San Pedro harbor, and awaits a heart donor to match his
unusual blood type. Two years later, he finally receives the
transplant, but soon Graciella Rivers (played by Wanda de
Jesus) visits him in his boat to ask his help in apprehending
her sister's killer. At first uninterested in her request,
she informs him that his heart donor was her sister, and he
agrees. At first he tries to get assistance from LAPD detective
Ronaldo Durango (played by Paul Rodriguez), the one who did
not provide backup during the chase, but the response is negative
and rude. McCaleb then approaches officer Jaye Winston (played
by Tina Lifford), who attributes her promotion in the County
Sheriff's office to his help in solving an earlier case. (Meanwhile,
he has blood work done, to check on the status of his transplanted
heart.) After reviewing tapes of the crime scene in the convenience
store where Graciella's sister was murdered and visiting the
scene of the crime, he finds a connection with a similar case
where the murder victim died before an emergency ambulance
arrived. He also discovers that the 911 call was placed before
the murder. The inference is that the murderer was deliberately
trying to kill someone so that the victim's heart could be
transplanted into someone's body. Someone, in other words,
hacked into a medical website to find out all those with a
certain blood type. Thus the killer stalked and shot Graciella's
sister in the head and called 911 so that her heart could
be transplanted into McCaleb, who in turn might be implicated
as the murderer. Soon, the serial killer resumes his evildoing,
murdering someone and leaving the same calling card. The clues
point to a psychotic two-time loser who had retired from serial
killing until McCaleb got his heart so that he could taunt
him, and there is an inevitable showdown in which good triumphs
over evil. Meanwhile, Graciella has fallen in love in with
McCaleb; with her son fascinated by McCaleb, the three make
a happy family when the film ends to the chagrin of Durango.
As is Eastwood's custom, the film carries an important political
message: Those who have been convicted of two felonies who
commit a third have no qualms about pulling off murders, since
any subsequent conviction (even for a simple holdup) will
have the same effect under the three-strikes law--lifetime
imprisonment. Eastwood's apparent campaign to repeal the law
in order to reduce homicide is made reasonably explicit early
in the film, may be forgotten as the plot unfolds, but is
supported by the loony actions of the film's villain, whom
filmviewers will probably guess early enough in the film.
MH
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