Rating of
2/4
"In The Blood" by Yojimbo
Yojimbo - wrote on 03/02/16
When the husband of a newly wed is kidnapped on a Caribbean island, she uses the fighting skills taught to her by her gangster father to track down his abductors and deal out some righteous vengeance. Very much a Taken wannabe, In The Blood follows to the letter the formula of lovey dovey montage/fraught and desperate search/biff-bang-sock-pow-boom. The only thing that really marks it out from the crowd is the gender reversal in that the husband is the "damsel in distress" and the wife the would-be white knight. I enjoyed Haywire but Gina Carano's half-hearted performance here lacks the intensity that made Steven Soderbergh's film work and renta-Latino heavy Danny Trejo turns up for just long enough to collect his pay check. The plot is just preposterous enough to be implausible while never becoming amusingly ridiculous and the flabby direction feels cheap rather than enjoyably trashy. In The Blood is not the worst revenge thriller out there but it certainly has the words "straight to DVD" running through it like a stick of sea-side rock.
