Critic Reviews

At times, Blood, feels like a slightly-filled-out television police procedural with better cinematography, but the performances have an almost Shakespearean grandeur.

This move is both redundant and counterproductive because it weakens one of the screenplay’s central conceits — the way Bettany’s guilt is shared and experienced by other characters.

A smart, well-acted and well-directed picture that adds up to a little more than the sum of its parts.

All four of the main performances are so strong that they deserve more space to develop and intertwine. Instead, at times, Blood plays like one long “previously on” montage for the series that inspired it.

It’s a crisp, cold little thriller with a real sense of the noose tightening around otherwise unremarkable lives.

While hardly reinventing the wheel, Blood works best as a tone poem, with unspoken passages detailing a hard life.

Originality may be out of Blood's jurisdiction, but it manages to plod on, dutifully walking a tired old beat.

The film’s family-saga pretensions and bombastically overdone characterisation keep hobbling its better elements.

Blood wants to be a Greek tragedy about family loyalties, guilt, and the fall of a dynasty, but the characters never manage to connect with one another, separated by gulfs of melodramatic angst and the plot demands of a boringly unspooled police procedural.

The landscape cinematography is often eye-pleasing, but the script is labored, filled with clichés and never allows for character development.