Blood work

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Movie
German title Blood work
Original title Blood work
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2002
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
JMK 14
Rod
Director Clint Eastwood
script Brian Helgeland
production Clint Eastwood,
Judie Hoyt
music Lennie Niehaus
camera Tom Stern
cut Joel Cox
occupation
synchronization

Blood Work is an American literary film adaptation of the Michael Connelly novel The Second Heart . Brian Helgeland adapted the book for director Clint Eastwood and created a nuanced plot that differs significantly from Connelly's novel. The thriller is Eastwood's twentieth film as director and lead actor.

action

Terry McCaleb is well over 60, but still works as a profiler for the FBI in Los Angeles . Once again he is called to the scene of a multiple murder, where the murderer has left a message written in blood on the wall for him: “Catch me, McCaleb!”, Plus a number made up of all digits except one (but what no one notices at this point). When McCaleb is harassed by a crowd of journalists while leaving the house, he suddenly notices the basketball shoes of a man whose face cannot be recognized because he is wearing a hooded shirt. McCaleb saw the imprint of a basketball shoe on the stairs in the house. The code killer! McCaleb finally believes he has him. The man runs away and McCaleb chases him - until he collapses with a heart attack .

Two years later, cardiologist Dr. Bonnie Fox gave the now retired FBI officer who lived alone on a houseboat a donor heart. It was difficult to find a suitable organ because McCaleb has the rare blood type AB negative.

Two months after the heart transplant, the Mexican Graciella Rivers appears on McCaleb's houseboat. She wants the former FBI officer to solve a murder case: Her 32-year-old sister, Gloria Torres, was shot in a supermarket while trying to buy a candy bar for her son Raymond. McCaleb tries to explain to Graciella that he is retired and that he has no plans to work as a private investigator. Then he learns that the murdered woman's heart beats in his chest. Graciella found out because he had an operation on the day of the murder and Gloria was also AB negative. McCaleb now feels obliged to at least study the police files and watch the video from the surveillance camera.

Since McCaleb no longer drives because of his heart surgery (in an accident the airbag could kill him), he turns to his already sloppy boat neighbor Jasper Noone, known as Buddy. He is ready to drive him around for appropriate payment.

Detectives Ronaldo Arrango and John Waller are reluctant to take time for their retired colleague. They don't care about the case, because they believe that the perpetrator is an ordinary shoplifter who lost his nerve and shot a customer. McCaleb notes, however, that the masked killer was not in the least nervous, shot Gloria in the head and apparently knew his way around the business. He is also astonished that immediately after the crime, a man appeared and put cloths under the head of the fatally injured person, being careful not to show his face to the surveillance camera.

McCaleb has himself taken to the nearest public library and enters some facts about the fact into an Internet search engine. In this way, he came across newspaper articles about a case in which the murderer was also wearing a mask: Shortly before Gloria was murdered, a man named James Cordell was shot in the head by a masked man while he was about to withdraw money from a machine. A passer-by, James Lockridge, found the seriously injured man and called the ambulance , but due to a mistake in the address the ambulance sped past the scene and it took 20 minutes for the doctor to finally arrive. By then James Cordell was already dead.

As McCaleb looks around in front of the ATM, a long-haired man with sunglasses and a cross-shaped earring suddenly stands behind him and impatiently asks if he's finished.

Graciella tells McCaleb that she missed a cruciform earring on her dead sister's belongings, and Cordell's widow confirms to McCaleb that her husband was wearing sunglasses on the day of the murder. McCaleb realizes that the wanted killer spoke to him at the ATM and that there is a connection between the two murders. Gloria Torres and James Cordell were both killed by headshots. With the help of his former colleague Jaye Winston, McCaleb finds out that both victims had blood type AB negative, the same as himself. When the times are compared, McCaleb finds that the emergency call from the supermarket had already been made before the murder. He is now convinced that the man who bedded Gloria's head on kerchiefs was the murderer, who returned after he had briefly taken off his mask and changed his jacket.

McCaleb has a fever. The stress is too much for the convalescent. Dr. Fox is appalled by his irrationality and state of health. She rejects any responsibility.

Graciella is spending the night on McCaleb's boat with her nephew, whom she has taken in with her. She and the man with her sister's heart grow closer. During the day, when she works as a waitress and McCaleb doesn't need a chauffeur, Buddy takes care of Raymond.

James Lockridge is found dead at the exact spot where McCaleb suffered a heart attack while pursuing the code killer. The police found another number at the crime scene. When McCaleb, back in the houseboat, occasionally shows little Raymond the number, the boy notices that the number has all the numbers except one. McCaleb begins to guess the connections. A week after him, Buddy had moved into the neighboring houseboat. Buddy’s real name is Jasper Noone (Noone = No One = no one).

Buddy admits everything when McCaleb walks up to him on the boat with his revolver drawn. After McCaleb's heart attack, the code killer got bored without his opponent. In order to give him energy again through a new heart, he shot James Cordell at the ATM, but it went wrong because the ambulance was late. Then he found out that Gloria Torres had the required blood type, and he observed her until he killed her in the supermarket and alerted the emergency doctor beforehand to be on the safe side.

When Buddy fears McCaleb will shoot him in anger, he points out that he has Graciella and Raymond in his hands. He demands that McCaleb let him escape and promises to release the hostages as soon as he has found a suitable hiding place for himself. "Then our game can start over." Buddy walks past McCaleb. He shoots an artery in his arm, ties his arm off with his trouser belt and asks him to take him to Graciella and Raymond. McCaleb finds the two locked up on a shipwreck. McCaleb frees her, and fatally hits Buddy on the ensuing showdown. Before he dies, Graciella pushes Buddy's head under water and ultimately kills her sister's killer.

Cast and dubbing

The German-language synchronization of the film was made by Film- & Fernseh-Synchron . The author of the dialogue book was Hartmut Neugebauer , who also worked as a dialogue director.

role actor Voice actor
Terry McCaleb Clint Eastwood Joachim Höppner
Jasper Noone called Buddy Jeff Daniels Wolfgang Condrus
Dr. Bonnie Fox Anjelica Huston Marianne Gross
Graciella Rivers Wanda De Jesus Susanne von Medvey
Detective Jaye Winston Tina Lifford Dagmar Heller
Detective Ronaldo Arrango Paul Rodriguez Jan Odle
Detective John Waller Dylan Walsh Marcus Off

Trivia

After the death of Klaus Kindler , who dubbed Clint Eastwood - with a few exceptions in the 60s and 70s - Eastwood, who always has an eye on the dubbing of his films, decided on Joachim Höppner as his successor.

Reviews

Roger Ebert wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times on August 9, 2002 that Clint Eastwood - unlike many other action stars - has not lost sight of his age and has found stories to use up his years. The strength of the film would be that it had three overlapping arcs: the investigation, the protagonist's health problems, and the gradually developing relationship. Ebert continued to praise the script, calling Terry McCaleb one of Eastwood's best characters.

James Berardinelli, on the other hand, described the film on ReelViews as a "big misstep" and "a disappointment". The cat-and-mouse game between the killer and the main character is uninteresting, the plot consists only of "a series of poorly crafted feints". Berardinelli praised only the performance of the actors, where he compared the portrayal of Eastwood with an "older Dirty Harry with heart disease".

The lexicon of international films wrote: “Routinely staged thriller about a second chance in life, which initially operates appealingly with the breaks in history, but then increasingly succumbs to genre clichés. Above all, Clint Eastwood, as the main actor and director, cannot give up his role of the omnipotent conflict solver and is increasingly dismantling his film character. "

The German Film and Media Assessment FBW in Wiesbaden awarded the film the rating “particularly valuable”.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Blood Work . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , 2003 (PDF; test number: 92 218 DVD).
  2. ↑ Age rating for Blood Work . Youth Media Commission .
  3. ^ Synchronous database : Blood Work. In: German synchronous card index . Retrieved March 17, 2020 .
  4. ^ Film review by Roger Ebert
  5. ↑ Film review by James Berardinelli
  6. ^ Blood Work. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 18, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  7. ↑ Blood Work on fbw-filmb Bewertung.com