Within every story about a corrupt and blood-driven underbelly, there is an invisible force that slowly and indirectly pushes it down and starves it to crave the greed and wrath it seeks out. Most of the time, the deafening gunshots of a crime-polluted tale are merely a symptom that drowns out the silent and true instigator of the violence: money. This meta-commentary and belief system on corruption, greed, and capitalism has always paired finely with the crime thriller genre. It is a simple way where the cause needs no introduction for the effect to take place. We jump straight into the effect while the cause can simply lurk in the shadows of the story and let its consequences take the lead. 

Rod Blackhurst’s Blood for Dust takes no exception to this ideology. Premiering at Tribeca 2023, this film exemplifies how the monetary pressures of the day-to-day world incentivize greed when our protagonist, Ciff (Scoot McNairy), a traveling salesman, reluctantly reunites with his dark past when running into his old colleague Ricky (Kit Harrington). Though Cliff expresses his distaste for how their last partnership resulted, the chance of walking away and turning his back on another job is not an option. Because of his need to provide for his family home, he is dragged back into a world of violence, betrayal, and paranoia.

This tale may sound familiar to many as it is a common setup to most stories within this genre. What this film does, however, to separate itself from the crowd is that it operates with an awareness of how the true villain of the story quietly lurks within motivations rather than announces itself with a bang. It does not feel the pressure to have a gunfight between every beat of the story and instead paces itself patiently. This not only allows for the times when the gun goes off to be more attention-grabbing, but it also gives us the chance to hear the true villain of greed reveal itself through the dialogue within its quieter moments.

This is also enhanced on the technical ends, such as the cinematography by Justin Derry, who paints this gritty world with a milky and soft filter on the lens. Some shots you could even describe as more dreamlike with their scattered light and soft focuses, elements rarely found in action camerawork. The visual language of the film does not try to speak the same language as the diegetic world, and all for the better in service to the thesis. A louder and shakier camera would put too much attention back to the action end of this film and fall into the visual tropes of other films sharing its genre.

Additionally, even the action sequences themselves understand the power of silence, not only thematically but also in terms of building tension. As stated before, the pleasant pacing of the action made it so that no shot fired felt diluted by its impact. Even within the pacing of the scenes, the direction would sometimes focus more on the person waiting around the corner ready to shoot than the actual firing itself, allowing itself to build onto the tension of a gun waiting to be fired.

However, with its well-edited and paced action sequences, interesting technical subversions, and strong understanding of genre and its thematic commonalities, this film does admittedly have its pitfalls that leave more to be desired. Most notably, lots of dialogue suffers from probably sounding better on paper than in delivery, as many lines sound over-written rather than focusing on sounding like a realistic conversation. Ultimately, it comes across more like an attempt to sound more clever than natural.

On top of that, although there is praise to be given for its patience in getting into action, that does not mean that its pacing runs flawlessly. The beginning’s hook jumps in and departs too quickly for a sense of weight or pathos to be formed, and what follows throughout the majority of the first act doesn’t offer much more rebound. This could cause some initial momentum struggles for some viewers, but if you are able to overcome an underwhelming first impression and get on the wavelength of the film’s direction and motive, you should be fine.

Returning to the positives of this project, the conclusion of this film serves its intentions well and, for the most part, really ties together strongly. After the blood has been shed, Cliff packs his car with the money and leaves the final shootout location. When throwing his rewards in the trunk, it is a visually unrewarding pile of cash, hardly even enough to even pile up on top of each other. Most action films would want their protagonist’s earnings to be overflowing by the end of their struggle, but this works in opposition to beg the question of it was all even worth it. When driving off, the camera lingers on the bodies left behind. The silence of these shots is strikingly loud, with the camera remaining as still as the corpses. It refuses to flinch from the blood shed for nothing, or as the title would infer, for nothing more than dust.

One of the last shots of the film joins Cliff at church with his family, where he listens to a priest preach about how we all have goliaths in our lives. The priest begs the question of how we should face these goliaths, and at that moment, Cliff watches a child steal cash from a donation basket. At that moment, we receive a final reminder that the goliaths we all face within this world, to some extent, are money and greed. It is what drove that child to sin within a church, it is what drove him to reenter a cold and murderous world, and it is what silently drives all of our stories of corruption and crime at the end of the day.

Review Courtesy of Eugene Rocco Utley

Feature Image via Highland Film Group