Mel Gibson in 'Blood Father' (Aug 2016 release)

[biolumen]

Trailer for this movie went up.

https://youtu.be/hgl-xVubsjI

There's a quick shot of a motorcycle going under a truck. Looks kinda familiar, but can't quite place it.

[Nightwalker]

Mel Gibson back on the acting path. This looks like a good old fashioned brutal action thriller. I definitely want to see this one.
And that 'motorcycle going under a truck' scene looks very familiar indeed

[Anklecranker]

Mel is still the best Actor. He carries an intensity that magnifies every character. This trailer has qualities that I like with scenes suited to Mel's acting scope. I'll watch it.

[biolumen]

First reviews are in.

Cannes Film Review: ‘Blood Father’

Owen Gleiberman
May 21, 2016 | 05:00PM PT

Keying off Mel Gibson's downfall, a grimy little pulp action thriller gives him the chance to show that he's still got it.

It’s silly to say that actors are the characters they play, but it’s naïve to say that they totally aren’t. That’s what has caused such a problem for Mel Gibson. He’s not the first celebrity to be sunk by bad behavior, but the lingering scandal is that it’s not just the things he said; it’s that everyone heard him on those leaked recordings — heard him screaming and roaring, heard his boiling rants of hatred. How can he go back to playing a movie star we like, pretending that he’s not…that guy? (Who’d believe it?) The answer is: He can do it, just maybe, by playing a movie star who is that guy.

That, more or less, is what he does in “Blood Father.” Directed by Jean-François Richet, who made the lumpy two-part “Mesrine” gangster saga, the picture is an obvious stab at career rehabilitation in the form of a scuzzy-bloody B-movie rescue-and-revenge thriller. It’s grimy sadistic action pulp, way down on the totem pole of respectability. If you compare it to, say, the revenge thrillers that Liam Neeson made to reboot his career, starting with “Taken” (2008), the difference is that the Neeson pictures, lurid and badly plotted as they often were, had a certain high studio gloss, whereas “Blood Father” is as basic as a ’70s grindhouse film. It’s 90 hardened minutes of shotgun mayhem, drug goons with tattoos up to their throats, and a general dirty meanness that extends to everyone on screen. But that makes it a perfect platform to launch the comeback of Mel Gibson: an actor who’s been shoved off the radar more ignominiously than any Hollywood star since back in the day when Mickey Rourke was doing movies like “Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man.”

“Blood Father” builds on Gibson’s downfall, in part by structuring itself as his penance. We first confront the actor in extreme close-up, and his appearance is a shock: his face more creased than we’ve ever seen it, much of it hidden under an ugly beard with a thatch of gray that just about screams “prison hair.” Within seconds, it’s clear that our hero is delivering an AA testimonial, and it’s a tersely brutal one, an acerbic story about how he lost everything — which, of course, the film presents as an analogue of Gibson’s own predicament. His character, Link, is an ex-con who lives in a sucky wilderness trailer park on the outskirts of L.A., where he inks tattoos for a living right out of his trailer and hangs with no one but Kirby (William H. Macy), his sponsor and fellow deadbeat.

It’s a stable non-existence, but it needs shaking up. And who better to do that than Lydia (Erin Moriarty), Link’s estranged teenage daughter, who vanished a year ago from her mother’s home? She has fallen in with Jonah (Diego Luna), a seething outcast from the Mexican drug cartels (not good people to be outcast from), and he, in turn, has tried to make her his gangster moll, which results in a shootout gone wrong — the film’s in media res opening sequence — that ends with Lydia on the run, desperate for cash and a safe harbor. So she calls up her dark-side daddy.

In Jodie Foster’s “The Beaver” (2011), which was Gibson’s first — failed — attempt at acting rehab after his flameout, he played a depressed CEO and family man who had a breakdown and decided that he would now communicate only by using a goofy beaver hand puppet. Leaving aside that this was a less than transcendent idea for a movie (whoever was going to star in it), Gibson was the wrong actor at the wrong time. His onscreen breakdown was supposed to be a cheeky acknowledgment of his private woes, but it was too wacky and harmless. “Blood Father,” on the other hand, lets Gibson act like a wasted badass, putting him in a kind of hell-hole comfort zone, so that he seems both more at home and more honest. Not to mention: He’s damn good at playing a bulgy-eyed reckless jerk! Who’s been chastened by life…but not much!

On the run with his daughter, in a slope-backed car that looks like it came out of “Vanishing Point,” Gibson shows off his gift for tossing out fast and furious quips. At the same time, we need to believe that he cares about Lydia (there’s a huge tattoo of her face on Link’s forearm), and Gibson and Moriarty develop a nice, unforced snarky interplay. The plot is utterly predictable: lots of driving, some of it on choppers shot with a touch of Mad Max nihilism, all leading up to the surprise return of a character we knew in our guts wasn’t dead. There’s one moment when the movie turns nimble: The cult singer and actor Michael Parks shows up as Preacher, an old pal of Link’s who is hawking white-supremacist merchandise, and Parks takes this barely written scoundrel and turns him into a wily person of interest.

“Blood Father” is trash, but it does capture what an accomplished and winning actor Mel Gibson can be. Just because he lost his bearings, and his career, doesn’t mean that he lost his talent. Going forward, if all he gets to do is angry-crazy Mel Gibson shtick in boilerplate thrillers like this one, it would be a shame. “Blood Father” looks like a throwaway, and it is, but the best way to think of it might be as an audition: a way to remind people that Gibson, if given the chance, could juice up a serious movie. At some point, he deserves to be let out of the Hollywood doghouse.

http://variety.com/2016/film/festivals/ ... 201780294/

Cannes Review: Mel Gibson is Officially a B-Movie Star With 'Blood Father'

By Eric Kohn | Indiewire
May 21, 2016 at 11:01PM

At one point, Mel Gibson was supposed to cameo in "The Hangover Part II" as a tattoo artist, but his tarnished reputation quickly proved that he couldn't play for jokes. In "Blood Father," Gibson finally lands that role under different circumstances. As a rugged ex-alcoholic who drops his needle to zoom through the desert on a motorbike — taking down hordes of bad guys to protect his daughter — Gibson inherits a less-than-desirable mantle from the likes of Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris. The punishment for his sins is a cinematic purgatory of mediocre genre fare.

It's not the worst fate, but certainly a step down in terms of quality and innovation. Having anchored the 2012 shoot-'em-up "Get the Gringo" and delivered bit parts in "Machete Kills" and "Expendables 3," Gibson now solidifies his new stature as a B-movie star, fated to anchor discardable material readymade for the bottom-of-the-barrel VOD treatment.

By no means a great piece of filmmaking, "Blood Father" nevertheless recaptures some of the rough attitude of Gibson's "Mad Max" days, as he shoots, growls and head-butts through a routine tale of angry drug lords. Directed by Jean-François Richet ("Assault on Precinct 13"), the movie adapts Peter Craig's novel into a middling action vehicle only truly notable for the way it illustrates Gibson's limited range. He plays John, a loner who lives in a dusty trailer outside Los Angeles. He gets the chance to bond with his estranged daughter Lydia (Erin Moriarty) after she shows up on the lam following a drug deal gone wrong. Abruptly separated from her troublemaking criminal boyfriend (Diego Luna), she turns to John for shelter.

Less of an aging Mad Max than a hairy Terminator, John proceeds to blast hordes of baddies as the pair seek one shelter after another, bickering about their disconnect over the years to no compelling effect. While drawing on some resources from his prison days, John spends most of the movie shouting and firing at various assailants while his pouty daughter cowers behind him. The lame backstory surrounding his addiction — and the efforts of an equally down-and-out sponsor (William H. Macy) to keep him on track — only exacerbates the archetypical nature of Gibson's role. But there's an undeniable glee associated with the image of the gun-wielding actor speeding along and dispatching of any threat that comes his way. With Gibson's image permanently cheapened by his public antics, he suits the cheap material.

Whenever John confronts any number of lunatics in a series of fast-paced maneuvers, "Blood Father" offers the full extent of its entertainment package all at once. But when he bickers with his daughter and attempts to take on a paternal role — "kid, you have the mindset of a battered housewife," he cautions — the movie falls short on multiple levels. It's too much of a straightforward action vehicle for the relationship tension between the pair to work, and Gibson's so incapable of eliciting sympathy that his efforts just sound like lip service. And maybe they are: At an early AA meeting, John voices his earnest desire to make some progress. "You can't be a prick all your life," he asserts, and yet he seems to be stuck in that mode for the duration of the movie.

The cheesy dialogue isn't as concerning as the way Richet avoids any opportunity to liven up the proceedings with fresher faces or sudden events. It's pretty clear early on that "Blood Father" will head toward a dramatic confrontation between John and the criminals on his tail, but once the movie gets there, the payoff is slight at best — a few well-timed shots can't rescue a movie so formulaic that it barely requires a script. If this is the new normal for Gibson, it's probably his best shot at damage control, by simply merging his tarnished image with a fictional one used in the service of entertainment. It's not a redemption so much as an erratic attempt at redirection.

Grade: C+

http://www.indiewire.com/article/cannes ... redemption

'Blood Father': Cannes Review

5:00 PM PDT 5/21/2016 by Boyd van Hoeij

Mel Gibson headlines the latest feature from French director Jean-Francois Richet ('Assault on Precinct 13'), an action thriller costarring Erin Moriarty, Diego Luna and William H. Macy.
French-produced films about American daddies wanting to protect their female offspring have basically become an unofficial subgenre since the success of the first Taken film, so it’s easy to see why French director Jean-Francois Richet (Mesrine, the decent but not exceptional Assault on Precinct 13 remake) signed up to direct Blood Father. Presumably, Liam Neeson wasn’t available so this time another testosterone-addled sexagenarian signed up for the lead: Mel Gibson. The result of their collaboration, which will be released by Lionsgate in August, is a serviceable piece of B-movie entertainment without an ounce of originality. But audiences that respond to films like these are unlikely to think that's a dealbreaker.

Richet opens the film with a joke — or actually more a sort of tragicomic observation — that perhaps only a foreigner could make. We see an overhead shot of a conveyor belt at a checkout line. Several packs of bullets move by, as well as a packet of gum. Cut to the young woman who buys these items, the jittery Lydia (Erin Moriarty), who also asks for a pack of cigarettes. For that item, however, which is more likely to kill her than others, she needs an ID, which she’s unwilling to show. The reason for that then comes into view: outside the supermarket, a car full of thugs, including her Mexican boyfriend, Jonah (Diego Luna), is waiting for her to bring back the ammunition. And let’s just say it looks unlikely that they’re heading from the supermarket to the shooting range.

The film is based on the eponymous novel by Peter Craig (the son of Sally Field), who also co-wrote the screenplays of Ben Affleck’s The Town and the two parts of The Hunger Games: Mockingjay. Here, he’s also credited as a producer and has adapted his own novel for the screen with Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton). Unfortunately, after that opening scene, which promised a kind of outsider look at America, what Richet and Craig have in store is a mostly predictable (and predictably violent) ride through a host of southern California subcultures that includes bikers, tattoo artists, former alcoholics, drug dealers, neo-Nazis and illegal immigrants. If the opening sequence seemed concerned about Lydia’s health and well-being, it quickly becomes clear that the film doesn’t extend that courtesy to most of the other characters, who all seem expendable.

All, except of course Lydia’s father, Link (Gibson), who runs a tattoo parlor out of his trailer somewhere in the Coachella Valley (but shot in New Mexico). He’s been sober for two years and one year out of the joint and hopes to live a quiet life in a nondescript trailer park where his AA buddy and mentor, Kirby (William H. Macy), also lives. But as soon as his 16-year-old shows up at his home, even though they haven’t seen each other for a long time, the peace is gone, since she’s followed by three Mexicans out for revenge. What Link doesn’t yet know (but audiences have already seen), is that Lydia took something from Jonah that she can’t give back.

As in his Assault on Precinct 13 — which, somewhat self-consciously, makes an appearance here when Lydia goes to see a movie at a multiplex — the action scenes are spatially coherent and properly put together, even if the film is clearly a modest production. An early sequence involving Link’s trailer is a good example of how minimal effects can have a maximum impact, as a generic shoot-out evolves into something that upends expectations. A motorcycle chase feels more old-school, with even Richet’s visual language of zooms, pans and edits feeling like a throwback to Gibson’s heyday as an action star. And the final showdown is a relatively low-key affair, with Richet trying to put the emphasis on the characters, though genre conventions demand something a bit bigger in terms of action than what’s on offer here. This compact — the film’s only 88 minutes long — and small-scale action vehicle more often than not feels like something from a couple of decades ago, which is not necessarily a bad thing but doesn’t exactly elevate it in a commercial field crowded with big-budget tentpoles.

A sense of individual psychology could have elevated the film to a fusion of action film and psychological drama, like in Richet’s mesmerizing Mesrine diptych. But here, the relationship between father and daughter and the backstories of both characters are barely more than outlines. There’s a hint, for example, that Lydia, who’s only 16, has an incongruous interest in art history, though the film then never expands on that. Similarly, Link’s backstory feels like that of a stock character already encountered in countless other stories and it would have been nice if he’d had something more up his sleeve than the (otherwise admirable) desire to save his daughter whilst hoping, against all odds, that his probation officer doesn’t find out he’s been shooting up half of the state.

Moriarty (the first season of True Detective) doesn’t look 16 but she’s got the right tough-girl attitude required, while Gibson slips into Link as if he’s known this tattooed roughneck with the heart of gold for years. Macy doesn’t have that much to do while Luna, who is offscreen for a lot of the film, doesn’t quite manage to conjure the required mix of gravitas and menace that needs to hang over the movie like a dark cloud.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review ... iew-896269

Blood Father review: Mel Gibson taps into rage for pulpy thriller

Nigel M Smith
Saturday 21 May 2016 07.57 EDT

4 / 5 stars

The troubled actor no doubt wrestled with some personal demons to play the recovering alcoholic and ex-con at the center of this B-movie about a father fighting to keep his wayward daughter alive

he first we see of Mel Gibson in Blood Father, his first proper vehicle since 2011’s The Beaver, is in extreme closeup - and it’s not flattering. His skin seems to have taken a proper beating following his well-publicised bout with drug and alcohol addiction. The deep set wrinkles that line his forehead look like battle scars, making him appear significantly older than his 60 years.

In allowing director Jean-François Richet (Assault on Precinct 13) to stage such an introduction, Gibson seems to be inviting scrutiny. Over the course of Blood Father, he demands it by digging deep to play a recovering alcoholic prone to dangerous temper flares. When his character, John Link, says to his daughter late in the film, “I’m sorry - I made mistakes and you suffered,” Gibson might as well be directly addressing his fans.

As comeback projects go, Blood Father is stellar. It’s a wonder Quentin Tarantino, the king of career resurrection, didn’t get to Gibson first. The actor completely tears into the role of Link, a battered and disgruntled ex-con. Richet matches him, delivering a muscular and deliriously entertaining B-movie that is sure to play like gangbusters with genre aficionados.

At the outset of Blood Father, Link operates a makeshift tattoo parlor out of his trailer home in the middle of the California desert. Life is simple for Link. When not sweet-talking customers, he spends his days joking with his best friend and AA sponsor Kirby (William H Macy). That tranquility is disrupted by the surprise arrival of his estranged 16-year-old daughter Lydia (the excellent Erin Moriarty), on the run from the Mexican drug lords after shooting her wannabe kingpin boyfriend, Jonah (Diego Luna). When the cartel comes a-knocking, wanting Lydia dead, Link unleashes all hell, evading his parole to keep his daughter alive.

Blood Father recalls the thrillers Robert Rodriguez used to make: it’s loud, outrageously violent, unabashedly pulpy, and doesn’t skimp on character development. As the body count escalates, so do the stakes for Link and Lydia.

Vitally, it’s also a lot of fun. “This shit’s a party to a dirt bag like me,” says Link, while on the run, aptly summing up the tone Richet sets.

But Blood Father wouldn’t work were it not for Gibson. In his personal life, his rage has publicly manifested in horribly offensive ways. As an actor, Gibson is at his best when he taps into it. Watching Blood Father, you can sense he’s hungry - eager to reclaim his status as a go for broke talent. It’s unlikely audiences will bite. Still, he makes a hell of a show.

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/ma ... mel-gibson

[Ol' Coyote]

No one wants to comment on that last shot of the trailer where Mel used a Sawn Off Shotgun ?

[biolumen]

Another positive review.

BLOOD FATHER Is A Tight, Entertaining Action Throwback

Mel Gibson rides a motorcycle and roars at a Nazi.

By ANDREW TODD Aug. 05, 2016

We don’t see enough mid-budget action movies anymore. Nowadays, Western action cinema typically comes in the form of either mind-numbing PG-13 studio blockbusters or straight-to-video punch-fests. While both of those extremes can net great results, there’s a dearth of films in the middle: modest, well-made actioners with a couple movie stars and a focused raison d'être.

Enter Blood Father.

Blood Father centres around dual protagonists in the form of young rebel Lydia, on the run from a drug cartel after shooting her kingpin boyfriend, and her (blood) father John Link, living as a semi-reclusive tattoo artist and recovering from alcoholism and prison. When Lydia reconnects with Link, her safety and his parole are thrown into jeopardy as the cartel moves in to target them both and they're forced to take up arms. Adapted by Peter Craig (The Town) from his own novel, Blood Father's script doesn't do much, but it does what it does really well.

At the centre of Blood Father is Mel Gibson, returning from an acting hiatus (because I sure as shit don’t count Machete Kills or The Expendables 3) to deliver a performance fitting for an actor of his experience and stature. It’d be easy to say that the role serves as therapy for Gibson, whose run-ins with the law, the bottle, mental illness, and the wrath of the public are well-known. It follows roles in The Beaver and Edge of Darkness that similarly poked at Gibson’s demons. And indeed, Gibson’s experiences no doubt informed his performance, infused as it is with guilt and empathy for his character’s plight. But life experience alone doesn’t drive a good performance. Gibson’s alcoholic ex-con contains both light and shade, showing genuine emotion and care for a daughter dangerously close to becoming like him, while bringing all that William Wallace fury to bear in the film’s intense action sequences. He's terrific.

Playing opposite Gibson is a surprisingly meaty supporting cast that brings additional credibility to his roaring rampage of revenge. I say “roaring” literally: there’s a scene where Gibson bellows at Michael Parks’ terrifying southern fried neo-Nazi that had my audience roaring back in approval. William H. Macy, as Link’s neighbour and AA sponsor, serves as both the film’s conscience and a temporary hero. Diego Luna (soon to be seen in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story) is typically great as the film’s principal villain, supported by a crew that’s sadly only lightly sketched. And Jessica Jones’ Erin Moriarty, as Lydia, provides the other half of the film’s beating heart, plagued by a desperate need to escape as she reconnects with her estranged father.

Along with his personal history, Gibson brings with him a cinematic legacy spanning decades. Blood Father is acutely aware of both. It’s hard to see Gibson operating any kind of motor vehicle without thinking of Mad Max, and that’s exactly the imagery the film evokes in its short but sharp vehicular sequences. Director Jean-François Richet (of the Mesrine movies) creates shootouts and chases that - with the exception of a slightly underpowered climax - land with a nasty, relatable impact, building up the film’s villains (and heroes) as forces to be reckoned with.

Blood Father knows what it is: a lean, mean revenge thriller driven by an actor with emotion to spare. It’s a borderline exploitation movie where we’re expected to cheer when a bunch of trailer park residents take up shotguns against cartel assassins - and we do. Full of ugly personalities and dirty imagery, it’s a return to the glory days of unpretentious action thrillers that did what they set out to do, and nothing more. You won’t find world-changing ideas or groundbreaking cinema in Blood Father, but you will find 88 minutes of hard entertainment. Rarrrrr.

http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2016/08/05/ ... -throwback

[DGSimo]

I just got done watching this as it's now on demand and in theaters here in the US. Pretty damn good flick and just made it painful how much Mel is missed. I couldn't help but think of his haggard look and attitude in film and of what could of been with Fury Road.

Also yeah there's like a major homage to Mad Max and Mad Max 2 involving a biker chase and how a certain sawn-off shotgun is used, right down to the pose. lol

Check it out if you can!

[rockatansky4073]

Watched this last night -
Anyone else notice Mel's character trick that biker to run straight into the grill of that truck and go under it exactly the same way Toecutter did???

I hope MAD MAX was brought up on set when it was filmed.

[Immortan Joecutter]

'BLOOD FATHER' was the film 'LOGAN' wanted to be...