Blood For Dust
Blood For Dust is a slow burn wrapped in a tight, hour-and-forty minute runtime that builds to a bloody crescendo by the time the credits roll.
Set in the snowy, empty expanses of central Montana in the early 90s, on the long lonely roads between Billings, MT and the Canadian border, Blood For Dust tells the story of a road-weary salesman, Cliff (Scoot McNairy) as desperation leads him into a world of crime and violence.
Director Rod Blackhurst and screenwriter David Ebletoft take their time getting there, and cinematographer Justin Oakey makes the most of the bleak Montana winter. Long shots of Cliff driving through the snowy hills. The camera lingering on a stripper in a Missoula dive bar where Cliff has gone to celebrate a sale. Blood For Dust is never in a hurry to get where it’s going. When it does, the movie takes a violent turn with brutal gunfights that are intense but never flashy.
Light spoilers follow.
It’s at the Missoula dive bar that Cliff runs into his former associate, Ricky (Kit Harington) sporting a handlebar mustache and a cowboy accent. The two were mixed up in a scam when they worked at a company called Meridian, and now Ricky implies quite heavily that he’s involved in new illegal activities, and that if Cliff would like a piece he’s welcome.
At first, he turns Ricky down, but when he loses his sales job and can’t secure new employment—even from an old buddy played by Stephen Dorff (both Dorff and McNairy were in Season 3 of True Detective)—he quickly runs out of options. With medical bills piled up after his son’s illness, which we mostly learn about in tense but brief flashbacks, he makes his way back to his old partner in crime. Ricky explains the dirty business he’s in, and that he needs someone that the cops won’t notice to help him.
Blood For Dust
“You’re an arms dealer that sells drugs, Ricky,” Cliff says. “I sell products that sell themselves,” Ricky replies. Cliff tells him he’s not a drug-runner, but he still agrees to go meet Ricky’s boss, John (Josh Lucas) and he takes the gig. Cliff, with his route and routine, is the perfect cover. A traveling defibrillator salesman and “middle-aged schlub” (as Ricky puts it) that nobody would look twice at. These are dangerous people, but Cliff hasn’t even told his wife, Amy (Nora Zehetner) that he’s lost his job. So he keeps the lie going and dives back into a life of crime.
I won’t spoil the rest of the film. Suffice to say, things go from bad to worse, and the second half of the film devolves into violence, betrayal and mayhem. A tense score from composer Nick Bohun keeps the tension building as our hero finds himself in an increasingly dire situation, with his old partner Ricky at the center of the bloodshed.
Blood For Dust is a no-nonsense crime thriller. There’s no police investigation, no romance. While it pays homage to films like Fargo, there’s no humor either. Blackhurst plays it straight-faced and grim.
If there’s anything even remotely resembling comic relief here, it’s in Harington’s colorful performance. The cavalier Ricky with his ridiculous mustache is equal parts bad-boy charm and leering menace, though his accent teeters on parody at times. If nothing else, it’s fun to see Harington embrace the bad guy role after his earnest turn as Jon Snow in Game Of Thrones. There are no heroes in Blood For Dust and no room for heroics.
McNairy, meanwhile, turns in a masterfully understated performance as the downtrodden salesman, chewed up and spit out by an American dream gone rancid. Cliff is a man weighed down by secrets and loss, but he never really unravels. He may not have wanted this life, but he’s more than suited to it.
The story never really delves too deep into these characters and their lives. It’s not filled with twists or surprises. I could see how the at-times glacial pacing could be a turn-off for some, but I appreciate the no-frills approach and the way the slow burn heats up and boils over in the end. It’s refreshing to watch a movie that isn’t trying to impress us with its own cleverness. It feels almost old-fashioned. There’s a haunting sparseness to the film that’s right at home in the cold Montana setting.
Blood For Dust releases Friday, April 19th in select theaters and digital.
