Featured Blu-ray / DVD Review: Blood Out

April 23, 2011

Blood Out - Buy from Amazon: DVD or Blu-ray

A direct-to-DVD release starring 50 Cent and Val Kilmer. At least that's what Blood Out looks like from the cover. It is bad when supporting actors are used to sell a movie, and worse when neither of them have had a hit in a while. So with expectations firmly in check, will the movie live down to them?

The Movie

The actual star of Blood Out is Luke Gross who plays Michael, a cop who's part of an anti-drug task force. The film opens with him on a drug bust gone wrong. While still recovering from the shock of that, he gets a visit from his brother, David, who is a gang member. David is looking to get out and get married, and while Michael is more than a little skeptical, he agrees to help him. He won't get the chance to, as David's gang sees him talking to his brother. A gang member talking to a cop. That ends the way you would expect it to, with his leader putting a couple bullets into him.

The cops investigating the killing don't seem too interested in finding out who did it. After all, to them it's just one less gang member on the streets. When Michael pushes for answers, one of the other cops stuns him with a taser and handcuffs him to the bathroom sink, to give him time to cool off. Instead of cooling off, he decides to quit being a cop and go undercover as a criminal to find his brother's killer.

He gets some tats, goes to the wrong part of town, gets into a fight to noticed. For the next hour we watch him rise through the gang waiting for his chance to get revenge.

We also watch a lot of slow motion fight scenes. Serious guys, cut that out. For that matter, this movie is a collection of bad camera techniques from split-screens, shaky-cam, quick cuts, etc. The filmmakers were trying way too hard to make the film stylish to compensate for a script that just wasn't up to the task. Another factor could be the director, who was making his debut in that job after years as a producer. Maybe he was trying to show off by going overboard on the style elements. Regardless of why this happened, it was a distraction. That's not to say the film would have been okay without these distractions, as it was little more than a collection of clichés with stunt casting to make up the difference. In addition to 50 Cent and Val Kilmer, Vinnie Jones and AnnaLynne McCord are in the movie, and all of them are more porminently displayed on the DVD cover than Luke Gross is. That's rather ironic, as Luke Gross is arguably the best part of the movie.

The Extras

The only extra on the DVD is a 17-minute making of featurette, but it is more in-depth than I was expecting for a Direct-to-DVD release. I don't have the Blu-ray to compare, but it costs 40% more than the DVD does, which is too much in general and there doesn't appear to be any additional extras.

The Verdict

Blood Out is just another entry in a crowded genre of gang movies with an above average cast mostly sleepwalking their way through a below average script. Style is emphasized way more than substance and the end result isn't even worth renting, unless you are real fan of Luke Gross. If you are intent on buying, the DVD appears to be the better deal over the Blu-ray.


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Filed under: Video Review, Blood Out