Blood for Dust
“Blood for Dust” is a deadly and brutal crime thriller set in 1992 along the northern United States, where the worst of men shoot and smuggle drugs and guns over the Canadian border in the dangerous world of organized crime. The movie was directed by Rod Blackhurst from a screenplay written by David Ebeltoft, and it is not difficult to infer the type of movie it is given its horrid starting image which rears its ugly head in the next hour and forty five minutes of more trouble. Scoot McNairy gets the lead and is ably assisted by other actors in a darkly atmospheric world that is timeless in its approach.
McNairy plays the lead character, a fresh defibrillator salesman named Cliff who is always on the road to make new sales. Along with his wife (Nora Zehetner), the loving couple who found themselves married and practicing Christians, have a kid that is suffering from a medical condition, cancer. Cliff appears to be a devoted man to his family, quick to turn to prayer and the words of God to find comfort. He is also a man who, concedes to the wild side after achieving success in the field, where to most people, indulging in strip clubs seems fine. As the story evolves, we start accepting many other details that disoriented images of Cliff.
In some way or another, none of these portray him as a self-righteous person, rather a person who has contradictions, whose actions are rooted in instincts that are beyond comprehension and that he is not required to justify to anyone, least of all the audience.
Speaking of his acquaintances, Cliff does have a friend named Ricky (Kit Harington of “Game of Thrones”) who has his own self image as some sort of a rebellious troublemaker, complete with an arrogant smirk, loud laughter, extreme confidence and one of the worst behaved facial hairs that can ever be seen. Ricky understands that Cliff is in distress and proposes to him an opportunity of earning a fortune in a matter of seconds by acting out the role of a smuggler and driving guns to Canada, exchanging them for drugs and coming back (or vice versa). He tells his American gangster contact, John (best played by Josh Lucas) who’s the perfect actor to play that part with his lizard-like swagger, that Cliff is his ideal candidate for the work as he is an average looking boring Mr. Nobody who’s not capable of causing any harm.
There is an appeal by John who gives Cliff a task on the other hand of which he is accompanied by a fairy and a ‘minder’ Slim (Ethan Suplee another good character actor amongst this cast which also includes Stephen Dorff who played a similar character, Ricky in the 1996 crime movie City of Industry).
From there it becomes darker and more disturbing. Best not to get into the specifics there, apart from saying that there’s nothing new here in terms of crime movie situations violent or otherwise (in true gangster manner, Ricky is very much a live wire the motivation based character that one would relate to the crime genre and other works of Martin Scorsese), And that the movie is more suspenseful when one is aiming a gun at someone than after the mesmerizing shot and instant replay of two people firing shots mayhem. But it is also true that the film is somewhat weak in places, there is too much pretense and too many attempts at humor for a film that matches up to the mood the movie tries to create.
How about Cliff. The typical salesman on the rocks riven by self-loathing and deep-rooted vice. Ricky too, in a very unorthodox sense though the man has a rugged cow boy persona.
McNairy would play the role of corrupt Shelly ‘The Machine’ Levine, a sellout of worthless properties whose reason for hard selling is finding his ill daughter in the hospital, while Harrington would be Ricky Roma, the relatively new man who boasts of ‘catching big fish’ and who scorns the bourgeois for their dull morals in case these actors had been chosen for a revisit of the “Glengarry Glen Ross” show.
However, Cliff is a much more sinister man because even if all is lost within him he still has a sense of self and guilt and a shade of some sort of code. His illegal actions stem out of hopelessness and that tendency that every american ghetto hero thing has which is to believe the cards are stacked against them why not go crazy and risk it all (and everyone around you)? Cliff and Ricky too have that sense of film noir hero of self deceived and self justified. These two seem to be more sinful than sinned against but you will not ever detect any of that lacking in them when they speak about their actions.
The ensemble casts’ skills are certainly at their fullest, yet McNairy’s more measured and interactive approach pushes them all a notch higher. The film is fine, but he’s fantastic. The other starred actor in “Halt and Catch Fire”, however, brings a dirty, wanted “Everyman” feel on the parts of a character who is no more than the pets of the beasts he hangs around, just trained. It’s not so easy to portray a character with very little attributes and characteristics of the persona without feeling that the particular character is a bit too malnourished or is just a sketch. This actor does well. It is a working Rorschach blot for an actor painting. Every five minutes you see something that is completely different.
On a technical level, the film succeeds brilliantly. Blackhurst and his crew (including cinematographer Justin Derry who has a Gordon Willis feel to his wide frame compositions, editor Oakley, and the remarkable sound team) have successfully evoked the sense of dread that those on the peripherals have when they think that there is no salvation. I never thought of the early ’90s as a distinct style period but they were, and “Blood for Dust” reproduces it; from the mullets to squished TVs and CRT monitors, the incandescent lights set the atmosphere drenched in red orange tint. Somehow, this movie also smells like tobacco. There is a certain sort of threat, too, real world oriented that lurks around the peripheries of a battered gas station or derelict house or an open, ice capped forest in the backwoods where terrible things could occur, and no one would discover them until a steam shovel found the skull.
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