hyped garbage

Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

This was a made for TV movie and it's overall quality of screenplay is consistent with what you would normally expect. The story itself has a few twists and turns that keep you guessing and therefore is convincingly engaging as a thriller. David Strathairn was pretty solid in his role but I really did not find Mary Mcdonell very convincing - can't quite pin it exactly but there was something slightly odd about her performance. It does veer towards the unbelievable on a few occasions but it is still an enjoyable watch which is given more credibility with an unpredictable ending which I didn't expect. A good made for TV thriller. Nothing better.

I like David Strathairn. I'm also a writer who loves small towns and has an interest in the South. So theoretically, this movie is my dream come true. It's about a writer who returns to his small Southern town. But it was really low budget and slow.Strathairn is not known for his range.This role was a testimonial to that fact. But for whatever reasons, I just love the guy. I guess it's his sensitive face and the intensity he reflects.I also hate it when non-Southerners try to feign a Southern accent. David did not attempt this here. I suppose it could be explained that his character had been living in N.Y. for years. But Mary McDonnell did it, and it almost ruined the film for me. Ugh! I think a lot of the other actors were faking the accent too and the production values of the flashbacks, etc. were not very good. The plot seemed complex and stacked with clichés. I didn't feel any chemistry between the two leads either.Having said all that, I did enjoy the setting, regardless of the fact that it was filmed in Canada and not in Georgia. I particularly liked the depiction of the old country homes and the acute familiarity of everyone with each other.If you have patience and appreciate moody "who dunnit" films, you were probably appreciate this one. I think it was made for T.V., so no real sex or violence, although there were hints of both.

I can see why some viewers might not get much out of this production. It is low budget, it is made for TV, it doesn't have a bankable performer, it doesn't have a car chase, not a shot is fired, nobody shouts at anyone else, there's very little blood and no violence, the courtroom scenes are there for exposition only and not drama, and we don't get to see Angelina Jolie nude. What we have instead of a Hollywood blockbuster is a deliberately paced and complicated mystery that's sufficiently well done to deserve a good scrutiny on the part of people who make Hollywood blockbusters.David Strathairn, a reliable actor, is a writer who returns to his home town to investigate a crime in which a man was executed for something he may or may not have done. The story emerges through the course of his investigation. Most of his informants are reluctant, if not downright hostile to his prying into this old affair. And the story really is complex, enough so that at times it is barely strong enough to carry the rest of this above-average flick. The crime, the subsequent trial, and related events come in snippets. Sometimes we don't know where a particular snippet fits and therefore why it's there in the first place. Stathairn's mother, we find out, was once tried for practicing medicine without a license in this rural benighted Alabama town. So what? He's supposed to be investigating a murder and here is his Mom on trial for performing magic tricks or something. A severe case of asthma seems to emerge out of nowhere to play an important part of the story. The ending pulls it all together, if you've managed to keep the characters and their motives straight, but it's rather a long haul.But, especially considering the budget, the iconography could hardly be improved upon. The location looks right, whether it was filmed in Vancouver or not. (I suspect some of the interiors at least were shot in the studios in Wilmington, North Carolina.) In the flashbacks girls wear those ugly thick stocking that might have been common in Southern mountain communities forty years ago. And for the most part the acting is far superior to what one might expect from such a venture. Man, these people have strong faces. Strathairn is no glamor boy, thank God. His shoulders slope down to nothingness, which is nice. And he doesn't miss a trick in his performance. Neither do most of the others, with the exception of a sheriff who comes across as a kind of mechanical stand in for the kind of human beings we can discern in the other characters. The elderly retired prosecutor, weeping with loss and guilt, never able to hold his own child, is a touching portrait rendered by a memorable actor. Mary McDonald is the kind of woman that every Hollywood sexpot should turn into if this were a good world. Her not-quite-pretty features are large and expressive. Her hair is a cowl of floppy deep blackish-red. And her voice -- what a voice! It is the soothing, understated voice of a concerned but somewhat distant shrink, with a bit of red-eye gravy in it. Her movements are smooth and languorous. She stretches luxuriantly, like an animal, without ever overdoing the sexuality she emanates. But she can turn up her instrument when the situation calls for it, from lento, say, to moderato, without ever screaming. (For an instructive contrast, it's interesting to watch "Witness for the Prosecution," probably a better film, in which the characters are engagingly hammy.)The director handles all of these characters in their often-unrelated scenes as deftly as possible. He moves the bodies around efficiently. Nobody steps in front of anyone else. And the director's technique matches the leisure of the performances. No shock cuts. No stingers in the score or editing. A few touches stand out. Sometimes we see a reenactment of the crime taking place in Strathairn's imagination, from his point of view. In one of them, the victim, a young girl, is trapped in a most prickly looking leafless bush. The shot is all in grayish tones, almost black and white, except for a startling patch of bright green -- her dress, which is an important datum. At another point in the film, the writer is imagining the victim standing at the side of a hairpin turn on a country road. Like some other flashbacks, this one is tinted slightly yellow. (Better than shivering dissolve, no?) Again from his point of view, we see the girl in medium shot, flapping her arms with impatience, obviously waiting for someone or something, although we don't know who or what, until she stops shifting around, turns slowly and stares deliberately into the camera. It is, trust me on this, an extremely eerie moment. And done almost offhandedly, almost without effort.

A writer (Strathairn) returns to his roots at the death of a friend only to find himself investigating a decades old murder which sent a man to the electric chair on circumstantial evidence. That's the gist of this very ordinary journeyman whodunnit flick which can't conceal what it is; a low budget t.v. product made in Canada. "Evidence of Blood" does nothing to distinguish itself from scores of similar films which are built around a recycled plot tweaked to appear unique. An ordinary couch potato watch at best. (C-)