BLOOD AND WINE (1996) **1/2 If the plot is improbable it is nonetheless developed, and if the film is shot with an accent on blood over wine it only goes towards a commendable level of suspense. Jack Nicholson sleeps around, drinks a lot, gets in fights...in the movie I mean, and ain't gonna take no crap from Michael Caine-who gives a lot of it to everybody. The film's best moments are between the two veterans but Stephen Dorff has a few and Jennifer Lopez isn't even all that bad. South Florida is easy to shoot interesting, which Bob Rafelson does without really getting into it. The characters revolve four dimensionally around an obelisk of a plot, intentionally going wrong in small ways that invariably lead to larger ways, then retracting into the protective moral shell of their chosen acceptable levels of malfeasance. There are no good guys to win at the end, and none with the stomach to benefit from the misdeeds they struggled (physically and spiritually) to pursue.
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