Jim gets away, but George is shot in the leg. When the other four men from the hit's crew arrive they search the dead woman's body, while armed with semiautomatic rifles. Jim tries to convince George to turn back, but George refuses. Jim gets the cigarette butt and takes the bag of money near the dead woman's body, soon running into George, who is hunting game. Realizing he left a cigarette butt near the dead woman's body, he hurries out back into the woods, but is rude to Debbie on the way. Watching the television, he discovers that the woman was part of a five person crew that robbed $1.5 million from a casino and viciously killed three security guards, also injuring twelve civilians. Panicked, he flees the woods and goes to town's bar, where he orders shots of whiskey, then yells at the bartender when she jokes about him falling "off the wagon". He discovers that he's accidentally killed a young woman who says to Jim "you are a dead man" before dying. One evening, while hunting, Jim shoots what he thinks is a deer. meeting, where he befriends George, an Iraq war veteran and Debbie's husband. One night, after going to the local bar and considering drinking, he goes to the VFW's A.A. Having few relationships, he eats breakfast regularly at a diner where he shares a friendship with Debbie, a waitress and working class mother unhappy with her marriage and general life. Jim hunts "game" (deer) for meat, and goes into town for his other supplies. One afternoon, while changing a tire, he begins to spit up blood and passes out, indicating he may have cancer. He is divorced and her ex-wife is now dead, while his daughter died in a freak accident at a young age (which Jim thinks he caused due to drunk driving). He is a former Marine who served in the Vietnam War and recovering alcoholic, being a year sober. And if you think Blood and Money won’t stoop to the tired trope in which the protagonist has to burn money to stay warm in the cold, you’d be wrong.Jim Reed lives in an RV near the woods of Maine during the winter. “Don’t make us find your son Steve and his family.” Remember those movies where the hero runs out of ammo at a crucial moment? Jim runs out twice. Hardly strong, silent types, these chatty bad guys love stating their intentions: “Jim Reed, we know you,” they shout. Jim, outmanned and outgunned, must take on four younger dudes determined to waste him. Barr, who also serves as film’s cinematographer, just keeps following Jim as he trudges through the snow and every extant survival platitude about one man alone against daunting odds. The only difference is that those modern classics were created by artists at the top of their game, and Blood and Money is bottom scraping. Should Jim keep the cash or call in the law? That moral theme has coursed through dozens of films, including 1996’s A Simple Plan and 2007’s No Country for Old Men. What are the chances Jim will run into those armed and dangerous evildoers and bring them to heel? Have you ever seen a movie? And when Jim stumbles on one of the thieves, a woman he accidentally shot while aiming at a deer, there’s a bag of money lying in the snow next to her dead body. Where does a lost soul in the wilderness find a chance at deliverance? It’s as close as the radio, which keeps announcing the big story about the local gambling casino being robbed by five criminals who got away with $1.2 million. And, yes, Debbie reminds Jim of his own daughter. Barr clumsily piles on all this info through Jim’s talks with park rangers, game wardens and a waitress named Debbie (Kristen Hager), whose vet husband George (Jimmy LeBlanc) is a fellow AA member unable to drink his military combat experience into oblivion. Bring on the exposition: It turns out Jim attends AA meetings and harbors guilt about the death of his daughter, as well as the son he hasn’t spoken to in years. This hunting trip is destined to be his last.
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Metaphor alert: Like the vehicle, Jim is also dragging his ass these days, breathing hard and coughing up blood in the snow. Naturally, there’s trouble ahead for Jim, who drives a custom rig with more than 100,000 miles on it. He’s determined to “bag a buck” on this trip to a New England area so remote and lacking in paved roads that manned checkpoints monitor those who enter and, hopefully, exit.
#Blood money movie classic movie pro#
Writer-director John Barr lucked out in getting Tom Berenger, a consummate pro and Platoon Oscar nominee, to play Jim Reed, a Vietnam-era marine and experienced deer hunter. From its generic title to an ending you can see coming from outer space, Blood and Money follows a path rutted with enough clichés to cover the three million acres of Maine forest land where the film is set.