Mel Gibson Still Has It In Blood Father

Released by Lionsgate

Released Date: August 26th, 2016

Starring: Mel Gibson, Erin Moriarty, Diego Luna, and William H. Macy

Written by Peter Craig and Andrea Berloff

Directed by Jean-François Richet

Rated R (strong violence, language throughout and brief drug use)

A girl walks into a big box store. She is buying five boxes of bullets and a pack of gum. She asks the clerk for a pack of cigarettes. The clerk says that the girl needs some I.D. or else the clerks can’t sell the cigarettes to her. The girl doesn’t have an I.D. and says “Alright. Just the bullets then.”

This is how the new film Blood Father opens. The film was advertised as a gritty, revenge type film. This scene seemed out of place for a dark film. Then I watched the film and realized that the joke fit in very well with the tone of the film. Yes the film is dark, but there are some jokes, not to lighten the mood, but to gives us some insight into the characters. I can appreciate that.

The film stars Mel Gibson as the titular “Blood Father”, who is a recovering alcoholic who runs a tattoo parlor out of his trailer home. We find out that his daughter went missing years ago and that he has been looking for her ever since. One day he gets a call from her. She says that she needs some money to leave town and asks for $2000. Gibson doesn’t have the money, but he tells her that he does, just so that he can see her.

So far so good. Gibson picks his daughter up and immediately dumps her drugs and alcohol and tells her that she needs to straighten up. She says that she can’t because there are some guys after her and they will kill her and Gibson if and when they find her. Gibson convinces her to stay a week and she agrees.

For a film called Blood Father you would think that there would have been more violence than what we have seen up to this moment. You would be wrong. We have seen someone get shot with a very big blood spurt out of the back of their body, but the film is more than that. It is leading up to something and doesn’t want to waste anything on people who don’t really matter. Besides, if we get a big bloody fight too early in the film that will diminish the effect later on in the film.

The men who are looking for the daughter show up at Gibson’s trailer and before you know it, they are shooting the place up and destroy the trailer. The residents of the trailer park show up with guns and the bad guys run away. Gibson and the daughter do the same because Gibson is on probation and doesn’t want to deal with any of the police bullshit that is heading his way.

So now Gibson and the daughter are on the run. They stay at a hotel where the clerk is hitting on the daughter the whole time Gibson is filling out the hotel form. The clerk then asks where Gibson found her, implying that the daughter is a prostitute. Gibson responds “In the delivery room.” Great comeback. Before long a hitman shows up to kill the two, but they are able to get away.

I want to talk about the rest of the film, but I feel that it would take away from the experience of watching the film. I am not a big fan of reviewers who go through the whole film, beat by beat. I feel that if I wanted the film spelled out for me I would just watch the film myself. That is just my opinion.

Gibson has been on a bit of a comeback lately. Of course everyone remembers his meltdown while talking to his baby mama on the phone. Gibson used language that would only be suitable for a Tarantino film. After this all went down, Gibson kind of disappeared. He had only one film, The Beaver, released after the incident, while the iron was still hot. He has only made one film a year since his fuck up with Blood Father being his latest. He does have a film that he directed, Hacksaw Ridge, scheduled for release in November 2016.

What Gibson did was wrong, but all of Hollywood came down on him for it. I get why they did, but was what he did really worse than R. Kelly marrying a 15 year old girl and then lying about it? R. Kelly still gets to make hit after hit, but Gibson can’t get a big budget Hollywood gig even if he wanted to. Why is that? Why do we take racial slurs so badly, but when children are attacked or molested, we welcome that person back with open arms. Everyone loves Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, R. Kelly, Chris Brown, and Victor Salva, but Gibson has to take the full force of Hollywood hatred. So I guess in Hollywood you can marry a teenager, rape a teenager, piss on a teenager, hit a woman and that is ok. Say the N-word and you are fucking gone. Good to know Hollywood.

Sorry for the rant, but this shit pisses me off. I am not condoning what Gibson did. He said some of the foulest shit I have ever heard and it came from deep down, so you know he meant it. I am just saying that Hollywood has their shit on backwards.

Getting back to the film. Gibson is fantastic and the girl who plays his daughter is good too. In fact, everyone is good her. The direction by  Jean-François Richet is tight and controlled. His camera knows how to sit still and he captures everything with an assurance that a lot of directors don’t have. Richet also directed the remake of Assault on Precinct 13, which was a good remake. In fact, it was one of the better remakes to come out around that time.

Blood Father is a good film. It was better than I thought it was going to be. The cast are really good and the film is nice to look at. The film doesn’t have many action scenes, but the ones that are here count a lot. The film is bloody and fun. Definitely worth the money.