![]() For the most part, fortunately, Blood Father isn't pigeonholed in either category. 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. 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. 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. Link's efforts to stay on the straight and narrow are complicated by the cataclysmic arrival of his wayward daughter Lydia (Erin Moriarty). Gibson's mainstay has always been passion-in both definitions of the word-and here he bares himself to the bone. His performance feels like penance, and not in a negative way. 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. 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. Certainly, John Link could be blood brothers with Porter and Driver, Gibson's violent protagonists from Payback and Get the Gringo. 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. 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. 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. 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. ![]()
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