BLOOD FOR DUST - Mark Reviews Movies

Blood for Dust, The Avenue

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 18, 2024

Cliff (Scoot McNairy) is in a dying profession, but he just doesn't know it yet. He's a traveling salesman, who works on and lives off the road, hocking whatever wares his current employer has to sell, eating at whatever place is along the way, sleeping in motels, and using a payphone to check in with his wife whenever he reaches his next destination. Blood for Dust recalls this lonely occupation of a time of simpler technology for a low-key thriller about desperation and, once guns and drugs become involved, its inevitable consequences.

The movie, written by David Ebeltoft and directed by Rod Blackhurst, is one that's admirable for how restrained it is in terms of its plotting and restraining it feels in terms of its protagonist's isolated despair. Here's a seemingly ordinary man, just trying to make a living to support his struggling family, who also has some dark, sordid secrets in his past. They catch up to him early in this story, and once he decides to embrace the seedier potential of his job and side of his personality, that hidden part of Cliff eventually comes to define him.

"Eventually" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that description of this narrative. While the plot—as is the case with a neo-noir like this—does contain some violence and a couple of betrayals and a build-up toward how the excessive greed of its characters will pay off, it's mostly about Cliff losing his agency and taking a few rides that will result in doom for assorted parties. That's kind of how Cliff likes it—reaping the benefits of unethical money-making practices and illegal schemes without having to get his hands dirty.

He did it once, more than a year before the plot proper begins in the early 1990s, and only stood by to watch as his best friend took the blame and his own life as a result. All it got him was some money that went to paying for his sick son's medical bills, a guilty conscience, and a bad reputation among anyone who knows or finds out about his association with the scheme.

McNairy, a solid character actor, is full of quiet anxiety and reflexive defensiveness in this role, playing a man who's convinced he'll be found out at any given moment and ready to do just about anything to protect himself from the consequences. When we first meet him (after a quick prologue of him and a colleague, who'll show up again later, discovering his dead friend), he's selling defibrillators to offices.

The boss at one business recognizes his face and remembers that he worked for the company that had all those problems of money going missing. Cliff attempts to assure the guy that he's mistaken, but he tells Cliff's current employer anyway. Before accepting being fired, Cliff tries to blackmail his soon-to-be former boss with his knowledge of some cooked books. It doesn't go well, so now, Cliff has to find a new company for which to sell things, lest he, his wife Amy (Nora Zehetner), and their hospitalized son lose everything.

An answer comes from Ricky (Kit Harington), who was involved in the past financial malfeasance and now is arms and drug dealer for a shady organization. It's run by John (Josh Lucas), who sells Cliff on how easy the job of transporting guns and drug across the Midwest will be—before telling him that any mistake or betrayal will result in his death and the end of everything and everyone he holds dear.

The beats of this story are entirely familiar, which isn't an inherent issue with the material. What does become a major one, though, is how Blackhurst's restraint with the melodrama and plotting, dedication to maintaining that quiet mood of worry and hopelessness, and efforts to establish a relaxed rhythm to the proceedings overshadow the story and characters.

Much of this does feel completely ordinary, as if we're watching a traveling salesman just going about his business, even as his life is in shambles, one of John's goons (played by Ethan Suplee) joins him on his first drug-running gig, and a stranger in a truck seems to be following them. The benefit to this pacing is that, when the violence does erupt, it comes as a genuine shock, such as when Ricky shows up to reveal to Cliff what his actual plan for getting him involved in this illegal activity is. From that point, there's more driving, more of Cliff being miserable and conscience-laden (He also has guilt about his friend's widow, played by Amber Rose Mason, for more than her husband's suicide), and more waiting for the shock of the otherwise predictable plot points to arrive.

On one level, it is admirable that Blood for Dust focuses on the atmosphere, the characters, and the sense that this slow, soft series of road trips are a wrong turn or two away from disaster. On another, though, it becomes clear that each of these elements is striking the same note, and the repetition of that tone, combined with the routine of the plot, is little more than a matter of hollow style.

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