Who doesn’t love a good Brit Crime-Thriller? When they’re done properly, they can look and feel amazing and we sense a lot of promise with BLOOD. If you haven’t already, catch up with the first look and trailer via this handy link and find out below what star Paul Bettany and director Nick Murphy had to say about their new venture in this exclusive interview:
Nick Murphy (NM): Blood is a thriller about two police brothers who are part of the dynasty of police, their dad is a rather overbearing bully of a man played by Brian Cox, and Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham for very good reasons do something dreadful, an awful act of violence. The unravelling of themselves after that is what the thriller is based, they investigate their own crime.
Paul Bettany (PB): My character (Joe) commits spontaneously this awful violent act and then tries to untie this for the rest of the movie, which he then unravels himself. It’s a thriller but it’s also a Greek Tragedy where he’s chased by the furies. Greek Tragedy is pre-psychological man – there’s something about Joe’s character that is totally unreformed, a totally unconscious human being who has had a very complex, difficult upbringing and I thought that was a really interesting thing to discover and play.
NM: It’s always a dead giveaway for a weak script if characters start talking about how they feel and all the best scripts never have that and it shows that Bill Gallagher who wrote this script did it very well. I honestly genuinely didn’t think we’d end up with a cast this strong because it’s a low budget British film.
PB: Everyone we talked about wanting to have in the movie came on board. Mark Strong is extraordinary in the film. He has a different outlook on life and approaches things from a different perspective. It’s a hard one to play and an easy one to mess up. I always watch his movies and always think ‘God I wish I was Mark Strong’. I had never worked with him before and there’s this really awful thing when you realise that people can be really disappointing when you meet them. But with him, he is the nicest, humblest, kindest human being you’ve ever met and it’s so exhausting and irritating that he has both these things in equal measure. I admire him so much as an actor and how he deals with things and everybody that he comes in contact with. He is so much nicer than you (NM: About 80% nicer ;). You have to feel that these kids had a really violent upbringing and when their mother dies there was no one in between them and this rage. So how do you do that, but when you have Brian Cox there’s such a latent violence to him which is just so powerful.
NM: I think it’s interesting Brian Cox’s character Lenny (the father) is really the author of the family’s mythology that spurs and spires these two brothers (Graham and Paul). There’s a scene in the film when Lenny and Robert (Mark Strong) is in the garden. You get two actors like that, and when the dialogue is made up mostly, it just shoots itself. We then all looked at each other and went ‘Oh My God’. It became a very easy working relationship very early. It was very trusting, very humorous, and very self deprecating.
PB: Stephen Graham plays my brother and he plays it brilliantly. Working with Stephen Graham I imagine is like feeling what lighting would feel like before it strikes, he’s like a Duracell bunny. I’ve never seen anyone with so much energy and commitment and love. You couldn’t get two people less similar than me and Stephen to play brothers so we moved in together in a sort of method approach and it totally worked. It was totally helpful to really prepare with each other the night before. I would sit down and cook him a meal and then discuss it because he can’t cook no more than a Kangaroo can.
Don’t miss THE chance to see BLOOD when it is released in selected cinemas, video on demand and pay per view on 31st May, and on DVD & Blu-ray on 10th June – in time for Father’s Day.
