Starring: Gina Carano, Luis Guzmán, Danny Trejo

Genre: Action/ Thriller

After marrying Derek (Cam Gigandet), Ava (Carano) believes this is her chance to finally leave her violent and rough past behind her. However, when on their honeymoon on a seemingly tranquil Caribbean island, Derek is kidnapped, and now using the tough fighting skills her father (Stephen Lang) forced her to learn, Ava must track and hunt down the violent residents of the island that are responsible.

Many things are reassuringly guaranteed in genre films such as In the Blood, and that is that if the protagonist has a violent past in which she was forced to learn brutal fighting skills, it is only a matter of time before they become useful for narrative developments. As made obvious by both the cast and plot synopsis, In the Blood is pure unoriginal tried and tested b-movie material. Therefore expectations in my view should be altered accordingly:

This film will not contain any shocks or surprises, but it will contain plot holes aplenty, nor though will it contain particularly good acting or memorable dialogue. However, the most important question for me is; is In the Blood fun? All I ask for is that a film of this ilk lets me just sit back and enjoy the mindless violence as I will see every plot development way before it happens. Well both are true enough for the first two thirds, however in a strange occurrence which I can only put down to sudden rewrites caused by the makers having spent the entire $10million (!) budget, the final third takes some bizarre twists that undermine the fun and make the film a total anticlimax.

Up until that point, In the Blood is just about passable fun. The crew must have spent the entire budget on cocktail parties, as director John Stockwell’s (Blue Crush, Into the Blue and he also played Cougar in Top Gun) camerawork is all over the place and very amateurish (maybe more evidence of an over consumption of cocktails?). The violence is quite brutal but not particularly well put together, and the editing is atrocious.

Gina Carano of course looks the part, but really cannot act, and so after being in Fast & Furious 6 now looks set for a career in straight to DVD b-movies like this. There are an incredible abundance of b-movies out there with pretty much the same plots, and I am afraid to say there are many superior alternatives to In the Blood. Even as a come-home-from-the-pub film it is firstly too long (108 minutes – films like this should never exceed 90!) and so really quite a dull watch at times as it often feels that Carano and those making it are actually taking things way too seriously. Admittedly it brings about the occasional unintentional titter, and a scene with a punch up in a club is hilarious, but not enough to make it a ‘so-bad-it-is-good-film.

In the Blood starts off as passable b-movie fun but deeply descends into being a very dull genre film with an ending as frustrating as it is baffling. Stick with Segal.

2/10