Blood In, Blood Out

This one’s an epic urban/crime drama set in East Los Angeles that spans over ten years.  The story focuses on two half-brothers, Cruz (Jesse Borrego (Con Air)) and Paco (Benjamin Bratt (Demolition Man)) who are Mexican, and their cousin Miklo (Damian Chapa (Ken from the Street Fighter movie)) who is half Mexican and half white.  Their lives take vastly different turns and they ultimately find themselves pitted against each other.

What’s really cool about this movie is the devotion to the characters.  We get to know their backstories and we spend time exploring their personalities.  Cruz is a gifted painter and he goes from being the new hot artist to strung out on heroin.  Paco starts out as a troublemaker (and ex-boxer) and turns his life around to become a cop.  These two are relatively straight forward but our third main character is more complex.

Miklo is the most interesting aspect of the film.  It’s not him that necessarily struggles with his identity it’s everyone else that does.  Miklo looks all white but talks, dresses and acts like his Mexican cousins with a Spanish accent, a collared shirt buttoned only at the top, slicked back hair and he fights the rival local gang.  He becomes a member of the Vatos Locos and is accepted as such among his friends and cousins.  But when he gets sent to San Quentin for killing a dude that’s when his problems really start.  Miklo isn’t accepted right away into the Mexican prison gang because he looks white so he needs to prove his worth by taking out someone from the Aryan Brotherhood.  After this he gets respect and climbs the ladder to eventually become a high ranking member.

So in essence the roles are reversed with the all Mexican Paco becoming a productive member of society and the half white Miklo turning into the gangster.  Cruz is caught in the middle.  The title of professional painter makes me think of white guys like Van Gogh or Pollock but drugs makes me think of all races so it balances.  It’s cool that this picture shows that skin color doesn’t mean shit and that everyone is their own person.

Taylor Hackford directs and with this picture I think I finally figured out how I feel about him.  Overall he seems to be a very bland director with no real discernible style.  Of the five movies of his I’ve seen none are shot particularly well or poorly.  He doesn’t do anything interesting production wise so the best I can say is he’s competent.  He shoots his shit straight up with no frills.  But the thing is he tends to choose good scripts and/or good actors so his flat filmmaking isn’t as noticeable.  Take Ray for instance.  I remember telling people at the time that Jamie Foxx’s performance was better than the film itself.  With Blood In, Blood Out I think the script was so good that you could bring in someone like Hackford to make the thing in a robotic manner and it would still turn out fine (which it did).  It’s just a bit of a shame because this had masterpiece potential with a better director at the helm.

As it is though, this is a pretty cool movie guys.  A good chunk of it is spent in prison with Miklo and the different races plotting against each other.  Those portions and when Miklo and Paco meet up again years later (this time as opposites and foes) are the best parts.  Cruz’s story is the least interesting because it’s the most standard but it’s pulled off well enough.  Paco’s works better than it normally would because usually a cop with a rough past isn’t explored in any detail.  There’ll be a passing comment made by some character to another character and that’ll be it.  Here we get a substantial backstory letting us know exactly where Paco’s coming from so the hardnosed cop shit has something behind it. 

By the time the credits rolled I was invested and ready for more.  It’s a bit episodic which gives this more of a kickass TV show feel and also because they left things open ended with Paco and Miklo.  Check it out.