This movie is about two brothers. They work as police in England, like their now borderline senile father did for years before. They make a very bad decision after having some alcohol and cops' instinct, and they have to deal with the fallout of that decision. Hence, the title "Blood" referring not only to a side effect of their mistake, but also the idea of blood being thicker than water.
Paul Bettany plays the elder brother and the emotional leader of the family. I've seen him in a number of his films, but the one that stands out is when he played Geoffrey Chaucer in A Knight's Tale. You may be more familiar with his role as the voice of Jarvis in Iron Man. Here, he gets a more dramatic role with a wide range of emotions. And, much to my delight, he does a very good job with it.
His brother is played by Stephen Graham, who was most recently in HBO's Boardwalk Empire as Al Capone. His character is supposed to be the weaker brother, and the result is that his role isn't nearly as hard to play. There isn't a whole lot of conflict going on inside him - it bleeds out almost immediately and pretty much everywhere. But that's the way it's written, and he delivers his lines and interacts with the ability you would expect from a veteran actor.
Brian Cox is pretty much great in whatever he does. I still think that his acting and the writing made Red an absolutely excellent movie. No, it's not the "RED" with Bruce Willis, although Brian was also in that one. In this movie, he plays the aforementioned senile father who can't be pleased by his sons and keeps trying to relive the good old days (if he can remember them). As always, he does a remarkably good job.
Mark Strong played Sinestro in the ill-fated Green Lantern movie. Honestly, I hope I remember that movie as worse than it actually was. I know it wasn't as bad as DareDevil, but it was pretty bad - in line with the Eric Bana Hulk movie. Mark plays the cop who is busy trying to solve the crime that the two brothers committed. He pretty much immediately suspects them, and they do a pretty terrible job of covering their tracks.
The movie doesn't bring much more to the whole brothers against the world thing than anything before it did. I am reminded of the Showtime series Brotherhood in the way that it pitted brothers against each other while always drawing them together. The story is very simplistic, but the interaction and dialog are interesting and compelling.
Direction is good
Pacing is a bit slow
Story is rehashed
Acting is great
Dialog is good
3.25/5