Cusack isn’t too good at going bad
John Cusack’s descent into Nicolas Cage-style C-grade action roles perplexes. There was no clear career bottoming-out in Cusack’s case. No “Ghost Rider” flash point.
Cusack essentially plays Cage in “Blood Money,” a momentum-free would-be thriller in which his oddball criminal character, Miller, chases a trio of young river rafters (Ellar Coltrane, Willa Fitzgerald, Jacob Artist) through the woods after they find Miller’s bags of stolen cash.
Wearing all black, up to a 1980s heavy-metal-style bandanna, Cusack’s character menaces the kids less with threats than general weirdness. He loiters in the woods, asking for cigarettes, and offers unsolicited love advice to Coltrane’s character while aggressively massaging his own socked foot.
This brand of eccentricity does not suit Cusack. He lacks Cage’s manic gleam and irrepressible sense of play. Cusack comes off as glum and a bit lost, negating Miller’s effectiveness as bogeyman.
Coltrane, the young actor who grew up before our eyes in director Richard Linklater’s “Boyhood,” remains a natural screen presence here. He and Fitzgerald share a chemistry appropriate to their formerflame characters. Coltrane appears to have a calming effect on Fitzgerald, who over-emotes elsewhere in the film.
Her character, Lynn, had a shot at being fascinating. Beautiful, emotionally prickly and loved by both rafting companions, Lynn wants to keep the criminal’s money and persuades one of the guys to go along with her.
But the screenwriters ruin Lynn’s credibility early in the film. It happens when she meets Miller for the first time and remarks to her companions that he is “kind of sexy for an older guy.”