Wicked Blood (Mark Young, 2014) USA

Reviewed by Linnea Nilsson at Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2014.

The movie “Wicked Blood” was the first and only movie at the film festival that had actors I actually have heard of before. It had actors such as Sean Bean (Lord of the Rings), Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) and James Puefoy (The Following) . They where all the reason of why I chose to watch the movie in the first place. I didn’t even bother to read what it was about, because I knew that it would be a good one with this cast. I think that the rest of the audience thought that too, since they all applauded as the opening credits showed.

Abigail Breslin plays a young and very smart girl, named Hannah, that will do anything to keep her family together. Since her parents passed away a while ago, she and her sister, Amber (Alexa PenaVega), are now living with their drug-addicted uncle, Donny (Lew Temple), in the darker part of the South that is full with drugs, guns and powerful people. The most powerful of them all is her other uncle, Frank (Sean Bean), who pretty much rules the entire city and running an illegal business that, sometimes, involves drugs.

Hannah comes up with a plan for her and her family to get away from the town, as she asks her uncle Frank for a job – as a drug-deliver. But what uncle Frank doesn’t know is that Hannah’s plan is not to earn some easy money, she has actually planed something much much bigger than that.

What I liked the most about this movie is Hannah’s character. Throughout the movie, she always draws parallels between real life and chess. She is a very good chess player and kind of sees all as a big chess game. She knows how to play out the pieces one by one to later, hopefully, being able to say “checkmate”. She is just this cool girl wanting a better life and are willing to take every risk to get it. Believe me, you will be surprised of her actions.

What I also liked is how they portrayed uncle Frank. His office was very dark with only one lamp on his desk, that was placed in the middle of the room, almost making it look like he was Don Vito Corleone from “The Godfather”. I must add that I thought that Sean Bean did a really good job being the scary, bad and powerful guy.

There was really easy to see the contrast between uncle Donny and Frank. While Frank was living in this nice house with a big porch, Donny’s life was more “white trash”. I just never understood why the girls weren’t living with Frank instead, since he always said that he takes care of the family and it actually seemed like he cared about them a little bit. But maybe Frank is this big douche who only cares about himself, at least it seemed like it. But if they lived with Frank, the story would have been completely different.

I liked this movie, it was never boring. They kept the story interesting throughout and, as I wrote, the things Hanna does are really chocking. But in a good way.