Blood Father

Two things to know going in.

The is a Hollywood "resurrection" role -- when an A-list big-name star disappears for a while and then comes back in a role you might not expect.

(They can be fun. Costner did a few and they were all interesting. In Fargo Season 2 Jean Smart came back playing a grandmother in a crime family -- and aced it. Gibson, formerly the "sexiest man on the planet" according to polls, nails his cranky, old, character is this one.)

Second it is not a A-film. The running time (about 90 mins) is the tip-off. So going into it, you expect something different.

Which is what you get.

It is not really an actioner, even though it stars one of the biggest action stars in the biz. And does have a lot of action in it. It is more of a road movie. And it is just quirky enough to keep interest.

If Gibson is good, Erin Moriarty is a revelation. This is her breakout role. You will be seeing her again soon. The script, which is razor sharp, requires her to have play both young/stupid and smart/strong at the same time. A contradictory role that would be be a challenge for an A-list pro. She takes command of the role and becomes unforgettable by her third scene.

Great fun.

After years of hard-drinking and heavily publicised, hateful rants, Mel Gibson has seen his career plunge from the A-list to the, well, non-existent list. He was once one of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, handsome enough to draw a female audience with lighthearted rom-coms, and suitably bad-ass enough to tackle the meatier action roles. He of course only has himself to blame, but Gibson has been slowly and quietly carving himself a niche with the few features he's done over past few the years - Edge of Darkness (2010), How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2012) - as a gruff enforcer not necessarily on the right side of the law.

With Jean-Francois Richet's Blood Father, the years of hard living etched on Gibson's face have never served him better. His character John Link, the recovering alcoholic ex-con getting by as a tattoo artist in a trailer park, acknowledges his past mistakes in the opening scene at an AA meeting, almost as if Gibson himself is pleading forgiveness for his behaviour. He is trying to live straight and keep his parole officer happy, but his peaceful existence is soon turned on its head when his daughter Lydia (Erin Moriarty), missing for years, turns up with the police and a Mexican cartel hunting her down. Fearing losing the daughter he failed when she was still a child, John takes her on the road and uses the skills he learned as a criminal to keep her out of harm's way.

With Mad Max (1979) clearly serving as an inspiration, Blood Father is pure B-movie exploitation. It's the kind of film you could imagine being made in the 70's with Peter Fonda in the lead role and Roger Corman producing. That said, and despite the odd explosion of action and violence, the focus is mainly on character. While this would normally be a good thing, it does so via every cliché imaginable. There's the wanted posters, news reports in dingy hotel rooms, changing of hair colour, and a climactic shoot-out, and it frequently felt like I had seen the film before. It's best when at its most furious, racking up the tension as Link faces a neo-Nazi biker gang and Lydia's drug-lord ex-boyfriend Jonah (Diego Luna). It might just be enough for Hollywood to embrace Gibson again, and from his performance here, I realised just how much I miss him.

When runaway teenager Lydia (Erin Moriarity) accidentally shoots her drugs cartel boyfriend, she makes a desperate run for it, asking for help from her estranged father Link (Mel Gibson), a tough ex-con still on parole. Together, father and daughter go into hiding, pursued by vicious killers.

I know that Mad Mel doesn't think very highly of the English (or anyone who is not an Australian/American Catholic, for that matter), but I'm still a fan, and Blood Father proves that he still has what it takes, the star putting in a moving performance as a caring father who will do anything to protect his daughter.

This isn't an all-out action-fest, which might disappoint some viewers (although there are some great action scenes to be had)—it's a tale of redemption, with a flawed character doing his best to make up for past mistakes, which seems very apt: perhaps Hollywood should learn something from this film and give its troubled star one more chance.

Best moments: the opening bit of satire—16 year-old Lydia buys countless packs of bullets at a store without a problem, but is carded when it comes to cigarettes; the motorbike chase scene (nice to see Mel toting a shotgun once again); and what's that? Mel making fun of himself in a scene in which he spews hatred of minorities? I had to laugh.

7.5 out of 10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb.

I'm old enough to have watched all the Lethal Weapon's at the theater. They were some of the best action/buddy movies I've ever seen. Mel Gibson is a great actor. He reinvented the tough guy. He's got a persona that few have on the big silver screen. The fact that Hollywood turned their back on him is nothing short of a crime. Well - he's back and he's doing what he does best - and I for one am thankful. I just recently saw another movie he's done called "Get the Gringo". Another amazing movie steeped in great dialog, action and classic Gibson lines and scenes.

This movie is every father's nightmare. A child or yours has gotten themselves intertwined with some pretty bad dudes and you're the only person that can fix it. Gibson delivers on all levels - providing a character that isn't completely foreign - but new enough to be interesting and engaging. William H. Macy as always delivers some great scenes - and the only disappointment was the lack of on-screen time devoted to Macy and Gibson's character development. Short - but effective. Erin Moriarty was a breath of fresh air - and her character and acting worked well with Gibson's.

This movie is classic Gibson. Great dialog, story and acting. 8 out of 10!

When we first meet John Link, Mel Gibson's grizzled ex-con anti-hero in his latest thriller Blood Father, he's in the midst of an impassioned soliloquy at an AA meeting. A self-proclaimed "real success story," Link is a recovering alky two years out of the slammer, whose wife left him and whose daughter is in the wind, leaving him with no one in his corner and with no one to blame but himself. It's a fitting noir-esque introduction to Link, but also—perhaps more appropriately, especially as he's talking straight at the camera when he says it—it seems to be coming from Gibson himself.

Directed by Jean-François Richet, who helmed 2008's gripping gangster diptych Mesrine, Blood Father seems at first glance to be another addition to the tried-and-true Gibson formula: a brutal guy on the wrong side of the tracks takes on those who wronged him, often in typically gruesome fashion. Certainly, John Link could be blood brothers with Porter and Driver, Gibson's violent protagonists from Payback and Get the Gringo. Living on the fringe of society while scratching out a living as a tattoo artist from his grungy desert trailer, Link is as blunt and terse as his monosyllabic name would suggest. The difference is that Blood Father feels like Gibson confronting the demons that put him and his career on the skids over the last decade. His performance feels like penance, and not in a negative way. Gibson's mainstay has always been passion—in both definitions of the word—and here he bares himself to the bone.

Link's efforts to stay on the straight and narrow are complicated by the cataclysmic arrival of his wayward daughter Lydia (Erin Moriarty). Strung-out and on the run from a bunch of bad customers, Lydia's presence puts her father on an inexorable course towards violence—which, of course, he excels at dishing out. And true to form for a Mel Gibson joint, there is no shortage of it: once the blood starts flowing and the bullets start flying, it's hard to stop.

Gibson's trademark wild-man intensity is in full froth here, and it's always a welcome sight to behold, even if it's been in otherwise subpar productions or against lesser actors. For the most part, fortunately, Blood Father isn't pigeonholed in either category. While some of the dialogue sounds more than a little ponderous (Lydia spends much of the film spitting out sheaves of insight with such precision that you'd think she were a Sorkinian heroine instead of, well, someone who snorts heroin), the rest of it is balanced in taut, punchy lines that would make Hemingway proud. And unlike Get the Gringo, which featured Gibson at the top of his game making his co-stars look downright amateurish, he's bolstered by some reliable names this go-around: among them, William H. Macy as Link's good-natured AA sponsor and Michael Parks as a seedy old contact from his past. In fact, the only real weak link of the cast is Moriarty, whose erratic performance is far too self-conscious and unconvincing for us to really care about her plight. It's only through Gibson that we care (and to his credit, he does and we do).

Much of Blood Father is a foregone conclusion, all the way up to its bullet-riddled finale. And while the film rarely evinces an inspired note, it's still a good potboiler, and there's nothing wrong with a well-worn story if it's well-told. But with an actor like Gibson at the fore, it becomes something more personal. Blood Father's about a man facing old sins and the grim reckoning that comes with them. And every single one of Mad Mel's is on full display here.