DVD Reviews

Blood Out – Blu-ray Review

By Frankie Dees Apr 27, 2011, 14:59 GMT

$When big-city detectives refuse to further investigate his kid brother\'s gang related murder, small town Sheriff Michael Spencer drops the badge and goes undercover to find his brother\'s killer and avenge his death.$

When big-city detectives refuse to further investigate his kid brother\'s gang related murder, small town Sheriff Michael Spencer drops the badge and goes undercover to find his brother\'s killer and avenge his death. ...more

Despite the packaging that puts 50 Cent front and center, he’s probably in the pic a whole five minutes - which is being generous to second-billed Val Kilmer who essentially serves a cameo. Regardless of questionable marketing, ‘Blood Out’ is entertaining schlock.

The real lead of the film (fourth-billed and barely seen on the cover) is Luke Goss, whom you probably wouldn’t recognize as Del Toro’s fav sequel baddie in ‘Blade II’ and ‘Hellboy II’ as he’s covered in make-up. When he’s not covered in make-up, he looks like Jason Statham after a slim-fast diet (which might have helped him nail down that Death Race 2 film). He’s actually a pretty charismatic actor and makes an appealing lead here.

He grounds what is otherwise a blatantly ridiculous film about a cop going undercover to avenge the death of his brother. The film starts off with a shaky-cam drug bust where cop Michael (Luke Goss) accidentally gets a young girl killed when the baddie he shoots lets off a reactionary shot.

Hilariously, not much is made of this ‘collateral damage’ and the drug bust is deemed a success and the girl is quickly forgotten by all involved.

When Michael’s gangbanger brother comes to him for help and confesses a desire to escape his gangster lifestyle due to a girl, it doesn’t take a psychic to guess that said brother is going to eventually end up dead – ‘Blood Out’ and all that.

When the local detectives headed up by 50 Cent show a decidedly who cares attitude, it’s up to Michael to achieve justice his own way.

This means quitting his job as a cop and getting tatted up and pledging as the same gang as his brother who he assumes is responsible for the death of his brother. It doesn’t take long for Michael to work his way up the gang ladder and end up a ‘general’ for his boss Elias (Tamer Hassen) who likes to surround himself by dominatrixes.

Things get interesting when Elias chooses Michael as his warrior to compete in a one-on-one fight with rival crime boss Arturuo’s (Val Kilmer) own warrior to decide who controls the whole ‘Americas’ i.e. North and South America.

So, yeah, there’s a lot here that is just insane and not in a good way. The idea that these two chucklehead crime bosses could control a square block somewhere in Oklahoma much less the whole of the ‘Americas’ is laughable.

But the pic is entertaining on its meager terms. Luke Goss succeeds in giving the audience somebody to root for and the villains are agreeably nasty with Tamer Hassen, Vinnie Jones and particularly Val Kilmer chewing up the screen Bazooka Joe-style. Debut director Jason Hewitt goes for a ‘raw’ and ‘gritty’ style that is at turns both annoying and appropriate.

What probably will disappoint is the lack of participation by 50 Cent who poses on the cover like Denzel from ‘Training Day’. He has a handful of scenes, one of which is getting his ass kicked. So if you’re checking this film out only because of 50 Cent, consider yourself forewarned…

The pic is presented with a 1.78:1 1080p AVC encode that does as well as it probably could with this low-budget affair. Nothing to get excited about but it looks good. Same goes for the DTS-HD Master Aud track although the source material does leave a bit to be desired with some dialogue exchanges seemingly recorded inside a catfood can.

Special Features consist of a Behind-the-scenes featurette and a trailer. ‘Blood Out’ is pure straight-to-video silliness but tellingly I was never bored. If absurd action is your thing, one could do worse.