Summary
Argentinian film Blood Will Tell lays forward a shaky start, but the thriller gets stronger from the second act.
Argentinian film Blood Will Tell, or in its native language La Misma Sangre, gets off to an unreasonable start. The thriller begins with Carla’s husband’s (Diego Velázquez) perspective, as he suspects that the family patriarch Elías (Oscar Martínez) murdered his wife’s mother Adriana (Paulina García).
But then Blood Will Tell provides an extended second act where it focuses on Elías’ story leading up to the death of his wife. A man consumed by the disappointment of his deceased father, with the pressure of owning farmland that was bestowed down to him. The Netflix film is not as dark as it sells itself to be. Director Miguel Cohan puts forward a grey outlook, a miserable vacuum, of a man on the cusp of divorce from his stubborn wife and his life spiraling out of control.
Beneath the surface, the Argentinian film becomes stronger once we follow Elías and learn about his pain and the darkness under him. The opening scene shows the audience his tough phone call with his father, laying the foundations to where his life is now. Blood Will Tell strangely builds the written premise that he is the villain, but there’s no real feeling of what the character is at all.
It’s difficult to understand why the director chose to follow Carla’s husband for the first act, muddling the story and repeating arcs because it does bring the movie down in stature. There’s nothing wrong with the performance of the character. If anything, he induces the mystery of the Netflix thriller, but the focus shifting to the head of the family gave the time for the film to breathe – to console the audience in the environment. Blood Will Tell is by no means a hasty film. The story is patient.
The film has similar implications to Your Son, a Spanish Netflix film that was wonderfully woven about a story driven by thirst and revenge. The only difference is that Blood Will Tell is a story inspired by desperation and regret. But both male characters are uniquely similar in that they both become consumed by their thought process – the ideas that they’ve molded in their lifetime, unable to release themselves from the shackles of their current reality.
The real shame is the opening act, but with patience, you can genuinely enjoy Director Miguel Cohan’s vision. Blood Will Tell shows an impulsive lost man who has adverse, undesirable effects on his immediate family.
