Review: Blood Father

Neither as gloriously trashy as Grindhouse nor a glossy piece of pulp as Taken, Blood Father is a nonetheless lean, mean B-movie machine anchored by a grizzly and growly Mel Gibson as John Link.

Link, a tattooed ex-con and recovering alcoholic, has had a life of nothing but downs. Eking out a living as a tattooed artist, he's trying to live a clean and sober life in a nondescript trailer park community somewhere in the Coachella Valley with the help of AA buddy and sponsor, Kirby (William H. Macy). His relatively quiet existence gets blown to smithereens with the reappearance of his estranged 16-year-old daughter, Lydia (Erin Moriarty, frequently grating), who is on the run and in need of cash and safety. "I'm like a fly that's about to be splattered on a windshield," she tells Link, who doesn't hesitate to get into his barely functioning car to fetch her.

Naturally he's aghast to discover that she's strung out and wasted. He isn't especially enthused to find booze, drugs and a gun in her bag. Nor is he feeling any parental pride when she confesses that she accidentally shot and killed her boyfriend Jonah (Diego Luna), a ne'er-do-well who's been stealing money from his uncle, who just so happens to be a deadly cartel lord. Link and Erin's daddy-daughter reunion takes to the road as they're hunted down by the police Jonah's crew, who want to ensure she won't expose Jonah's double-dealings.

Capably directed by Jean-François Richet (Mesrine, Assault on Precinct 13), Blood Father's parts are often more effective than its whole. Its predictability is offset by its increasing nastiness. This is a movie that gets better the more it embraces its vicious nature. Though running a brief 88 minutes, it waits a smidge too long before letting all hell break loose.

Though the humour never completely gels with the predominant grittiness of the film, the laughs often land on target. A cashier doesn't blink twice when Lydia buys bullets along with her bubblegum, but refuses to sell her cigarettes without a proper ID. When Lydia sees her face plastered all over the news, her first reaction is "I'm a celebrity!" A seemingly minor scene like Link phoning Kirby to ask for advice on how to deal with Lydia is punctuated with a chuckle as Richet reveals the men to be within earshot of one another.

Richet and screenwriters Andrea Berloff and Peter Craig, the latter adapting his own novel on which the film is based, also weave laughs into the film's best scene as Link matter-of-factly and annoyingly rattles off all of the parole violations he's committing - aggravated assault, attempted murder, etc. - as he defends himself and Lydia from Jonah's crew as they attack Link's trailer park. Of course, this is as much due to the filmmakers' canniness in capitalising on both Gibson's on-screen persona and his off-screen travails. Link is as much a combination of Mad Max, Martin Riggs and Payback's Porter as he is a meta-version of Gibson trying to get back on track after derailing his career with his well-publicised bad behaviour. This may not be his comeback or his redemption, but it should remind audiences what a terrific talent he was, is and can be.

Blood Father

Directed by: Jean-François Richet

Written by: Peter Craig, Andrea Berloff; based on the novel by Peter Craig

Starring: Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty, William H. Macy, Diego Luna, Miguel Sandoval, Michael Parks, Dale Dickey