Sometimes you like something and you’re not entirely sure why. Case in point: Blood for Dust, a 1990s style “who’s zooming who?” thriller in which people die in hails of bullets, bad guys abound and cases of money are swapped for white powder in remote locations while stiff-legged men with guns stand about ready to shoot.
It is very familiar. And yet. The two central performances help a lot. First up, Scoot McNairy, who I’ve enjoyed watching ever since he starred in Gareth Edwards’s feature debut, 2010’s Monsters, a smart reworking of 1930s screwball comedy It Happened One Night as sci-fi. Underused almost ever since, he proves himself again here, his dustbowl-lean features lending a haunted aspect to his portrayal of Cliff, a travelling salesman down on his luck, who is lured into taking a courier-level gig with a gang who run guns and drugs.
The man who lures him is played by the other key performer. Kit Harington’s Ricky is a studied mix of Matthew McConaughey and Tom Hardy and if all you know of Harington is Jon Snow, the most boring character in Game of Thrones, you might be surprised by how good he is as a courtly and wild-eyed maniac liable to pop at any minute.
So, the plot: Ricky, a fellow road-warrior sick of the salesman life, lures the reluctant but desperate Cliff into signing on for a job with a gang run by Josh Lucas’s gang boss John – another case of elaborate manners concealing something deeply unpleasant underneath. All Cliff has to do is drive somewhere with something in his car – ask no questions – swap it for money and return. It couldn’t be easier, except things aren’t going to go to plan, or else there’d be no movie.
The atmosphere is neo-noir and the action is set in the snowy wastes of wintry Montana, in mostly empty spaces that all seem to have been designed with a movie in mind: a diner, a parking lot, a rake of trailer homes. Maybe it works because director and co-writer Rod Blackhurst insists on giving us some background on Cliff’s life away from the gang, with a wife (Nora Zehetner) he barely sees because he’s always on the road. Early on we see Cliff trying to sell legit products to people who largely aren’t interested in hearing his pitch. There is a suggestion that Cliff has a hinterland – an affair, a bit of hunting in an earlier existence. Perhaps he’s not quite the milquetoast he appears.
But nothing too glamorous. Cliff’s life is bleak and once he’s joined the gang it doesn’t get any better. In fact it’s depressingly similar – driving along the interstate highway to sell cocaine is remarkably similar to driving along the interstate to sell defibrillators, it turns out. Until it isn’t.
Which brings us to the inevitable shootout finale, which seems to come about two twists of the plot too early and yet makes a kind of sense. It would be glamorous if Cliff made a bit of a go of drug-running but it’s more in keeping with the tone of the film for him to flame out early on.
Bleakness is its own glamour, seen from a certain angle, and Blackhurst and his team stay resolutely on that path. The score, by Nick Bohun, for instance, has the insistence of a rusty gate hinge, the discomfiting effect of fingernails down the blackboard.
By the end there are many dead people in many locations and Blackhurst gives us a reminder of those we have lost along the way. A nice 1990s touch bringing the curtain down on a film that might yet have a bit of an afterlife.
Blood for Dust – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024
