The key to catching a killer is only a heartbeat away.
Someone's got Terry McCaleb's number. A veteran FBI profiler, McCaleb (Clint Eastwood) is unrelenting in his pursuit of justice and unequalled in his success at tracking and catching murderers. But as he closes in on his latest adversary - a psychopath dubbed "The Code Killer" by the media - McCaleb is felled by a massive heart attack and forced into early retirement.
Two years later, beautiful stranger Graciela Rivers (Wanda de Jesus) reveals a secret that compels McCaleb to re-examine his recovery: his life was saved by someone else's death - the victim of a murder that remains unsolved.
Against the advice of his cardiologist, Doctor Bonnie Fox (Anjelica Huston), and with the help of eager neighbour Buddy Noone (Jeff Daniels), McCaleb literally puts his life on the line to track down a murderer who has forced him to take this case personally.
Special Agent Matti
Blood work: adjective, doing a job that involves lots of dead people, esp. when they have been murdered.
Blood work: pun, a movie about a serial killer who bonds with their high-profile profiler.
Serial killers have been all over the news since Jack the Ripper and, like arsonists, they get a hit out of all the attention. That's why profilers usually classify them as "losers", because they are. Profilers have been all over the news since Jack the Ripper and, like serial killers, they get a hit out of all the attention. The relationship is symbiotic.
In Blood work Clint Eastwood plays a has-been profiler who only comes back to life when people start dying. You know it's all a set-up because you're watching a movie - people don't die for no reason in movies - but you don't realise just how much of a set-up until you've been well and truly hooked. One thing you can guarantee with a Clint Eastwood film is that it's going to be well made, intelligent and rewarding. Even the comparatively fluffy Space cowboys is worth the price of admission (or rental, depending on when you're reading this).
It's all good.
As as exercise in filmmaking, you can pay special attention to the tension factor versus the laboured pace of the protagonist - there are a few quick bits but by and large nothing goes faster than a pacemaker: well done. On the downside, movie cliché: A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from duty.
M (Medium level violence, low level coarse language)
106 minutes (1:46 hours)
Film: 14 November 2002
DVD rental: 11 June 2003
DVD retail: 11 June 2003
VHS rental: 11 June 2003