In the Blood is a 2014 American action film directed by John Stockwell and starring former fighter Gina Carano in her second lead role after 2011's Haywire. The plot revolves around a 26-year-old newlywed named Ava who searches for her husband after he is abducted on their Caribbean honeymoon.
Plot
In 2002, Ava, a 14-year-old girl from Bridgeport, Connecticut, is woken up in the middle of the night and sees her drug lord father murdered by two masked intruders, before grabbing a shotgun and gunning down the two assailants. Twelve years later, after a rough life and recovering from drug and alcohol addiction, Ava marries the affluent Derek Grant in Arlington, the two having met while attending Narcotics Anonymous gatherings. After the ceremony, the newlyweds fly off for their honeymoon to a Caribbean island where Derek's family owns a summer home. One evening, the couple befriends a young local named Manny who invites them to a nightclub, where Ava gets into a violent fight with several patrons following an encounter with local criminal Big Biz. The next morning, Manny invites Ava and Derek to ride "El Viudador" a mile-long zip-line in the rainforest. Once there, Ava, who's afraid of heights, declines to godown the line, but Derek does, and his harness snaps while descending, making him fall to the ground. Ava finds him in the forest, unconscious and severely injured, but alive. Unable to ride in the ambulance with her husband, she eventually reaches the hospital, where staff deny that Derek was brought in. After realizing that none of the island's other clinics and medical facilities have admitted her husband, Ava goes to the police to declare him missing. The police take her to the zip-line but the owner denies being open the day Derek fell and denies that he knows anyone involved. Ava starts to look on her own. Stranded in a foreign land, faced with inaction from the local authorities and suspicion from her father-in-law, Ava tries to piece together what happened and find her husband, whatever it takes. Eventually Ava tracks down the location of her husband. Ava rescues her husband. Then they have to fight a gang of criminals hunting them down. Ava and Derek take down the henchmen and Ava has a fight with their leader. Ava, after struggling is able to win the fight and use him as a shield with a knife to his neck. Big Biz arrives. He takes the knife from Ava and cuts the throat of the leader, killing him. He then tells Ava and her husband to leave the island and go home. Ava and her husband leave the island on a boat as the film ends.
Cast
Gina Carano as Ava, the 26-year-old lead character, who's trying to find her husband.
*Paloma Olympia Louvat portrays Ava at 14 in the film's prologue and flashbacks.
Cam Gigandet as Derek Grant, Ava's husband who goes missing on their honeymoon.
Ismael Cruz Córdova as Manny, a young local who befriends Ava and Derek.
Luis Guzmán as Chief Ramón Garza, the officer in charge of investigating Derek's disappearance.
Treat Williams as Robert Grant, Derek's father, who disapproves of Ava.
Amaury Nolasco as Silvio Lugo, a local crime figure.
Stephen Lang as Casey, Ava's father, who appears in flashbacks.
Danny Trejo as Big Biz, a local crime figure.
Production
The film was shot in Puerto Rico from November 25 to December 26, 2012. Although portraying a 26-year-old, Gina Carano was actually 30 at the time.
Release
In the Blood premiered in the United States on April 4, 2014, through a limited theatrical release and video on demand before coming out on home video two months later. Internationally, the film received a theatrical release in countries such as Vietnam, Kuwait, Singapore, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, the Philippines and Japan while coming out direct-to-video in the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands and Germany and premiering on television in Spain.
Reception
website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 37% based on 41 reviews and an average rating of 5/10. Variety's Ben Kenigsberg called the film a "serviceable action vehicle", while on the other hand, Nick Schager in The Village Voice described it as a "subpar action movie", that is "grim" and "formulaic", while singling out Gina Carano’s "badass-beauty charm". In The New York Times, Andy Webster also praised Gina Carano but lamented that she was "trapped in B-film depths", hoping that someone would "give her a better script and director". Writing for the New YorkDaily News however, Elizabeth Weitzman was more critical of Carano, stating that while "an undeniably impressive force" she was "not convincing" as an actress, but noted that the film had "a strong supporting cast, some pretty scenery and a taut mystery". Brian Tallerico from RogerEbert.com gave the film one star out of four, writing that the "film history is filled with xenophobic tales of pretty Americans who disappear in foreign lands and the pretty people tasked with finding them".
