Clive Owen, who longish, tousled hair makes the character lines on his face seem even deeper and more severe, plays Chris, the older brother who is being released from prison at the beginning of the film. His younger brother, Frank (Billy Crudup), is a police detective who has looked up to Chris his whole life, but has become so disgusted with brother’s criminality that he has neglected to visit him even once in prison. Nevertheless, he allows Chris to live with him, which doesn’t sit well with his police lieutenant (Noah Emmerich), who does not trust that Chris will stay on the straight and narrow. Frank feels obligated to help Chris in some manner, even as he quietly resents the way the members of his family—his terminally ill father (James Caan) and his preternaturally optimistic sister (Lili Taylor)—lionize Chris and shunt him aside. Roguish charm beats world-wearied morality every time.

As the story unfolds, Chris is eventually drawn back into the criminal life, but not before making an honest attempt to go straight by opening a hotdog stand in a park with his childhood friend Mike (Domenick Lombardozzi), who has also been recently released from prison. He also meets a new woman, Natalie (Mila Kunis), at a car dealership where he is briefly employed, and reconnects with his ex-wife Monica (Marion Cotillard), a drug addict who has turned to prostitution. Frank, meanwhile, attempts to rekindle a relationship with his ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Zoe Saldana), who is now married to Scarfo (Matthias Schoenaerts), a drug dealer who Frank helps to bust and return to prison. The question of whether he is simply performing his duty as a police officer or getting a rival suitor out of the way is left intentionally vague. Unfortunately, these subplots are among the film’s weakest, as they never feel completely integral to the story’s overall tensions and, in the case of Owen and Kunis, the actors have no real chemistry.

This is also partially due to the fact that the heart of the story is all masculine and familial bravado: the emotional and moral conflict between the two brothers, who are so fundamentally different that it is hard to imagine that they emerged from the same gene pool. Yet, credit to Owen and Crudup for developing a believable, often moving sense of connection between the two men, one that is constantly strained by their opposing personalities and moralities, not to mention the remnants of guilt from childhood experiences that helped shape them into who they are today (some of which is, unfortunately, elaborated a bit too much in heavy-handed dialogue). Crudup exudes a kind of quiet, fragile exhaustion, the kind that comes from constantly trying to do the right thing and getting punished for it, while Owen embodies that particularly dangerous mixture of charisma and violence. The sequence in which he re-enters the criminal life by assassinating a number of rival gangsters in a pub in broad daylight is both shocking in its unblinking depiction of gun violence and unnerving in the way it suggests just how closely that violence is constantly rumbling beneath his surface jocularity.

Blood Ties is a remake of the 2008 French film Les liens du sang, in which director Guillaume Canet starred in the Crudup role. His decision to co-write (with James Gray) and direct an English-language remake suggests a real affinity for the material. European directors often display a flair for conveying the rough-and-tumble nature of America’s darker corners, and Canet is no different. His early ’70s Brooklyn is a scuzzy, washed-out place of hardened men and desperate women, although what makes Blood Ties memorable is the way he manages to squeeze out a sense of hope in the final reel. Blood is certainly shed and lives are lost, but the sacrifices made by both Chris and Frank in the film’s final moments suggest that redemption is always possible, even if the real-world price to be paid is still painfully steep.

Copyright ©2014 James Kendrick

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