Clip It: Each day, Jon Davis looks at the world of trailers, featurettes, and clips and puts it all in perspective.
The Blood in the Water trailer features two taglines. The first one is: “In the city of angels, no one gets ahead without being a little bad.”
As a citizen of Los Angeles, I can tell you that's simply not true. Just because the lead character in this movie sells drugs does not mean you have to do that if you want upward mobility here. Most, if not all, of the people I know don't sell drugs, and I've seen many of them do quite well for themselves. Some of them live in the Hills and I'm fairly certain they aren't pushing Oxycontin on the weekends. I'd go as far as to say that people who get ahead in this town tend not to be drug dealers. It's really overstating it to suggest that “no one gets ahead,” I mean, what about people with careers in medicine or non-profits? Let's not be so narrow with our assumptions, Blood in the Water.
The second tagline is: “Friends don't let friends get away with murder.” This is a take on the popular PSA phrase, “Friends don't let friends drive drunk.” The latter is somewhat useful, as there are a lot of circumstances where we can be too complacent about allowing a friend who's had one too many get in their car. The former? It's not the kind of problem you hear of very often. Chances are, if you are letting your friend get away with murder, you are an accomplice, so it's really more of a legal issue than anything else. Also, it doesn't seem like the guy who gets murdered is really friends with the leading man. He's someone he knew in college and doesn't want to hang out with anymore. I hardly think the word “friend” applies. More of an acquaintance.
Obviously, the biggest problem with this movie is that there are no sharks. The reason the title is Blood in the Water is because a guy gets murdered in a pool. But in the world of cinema, it makes you think of The Shallows or any scene where someone's scuba diving and getting caught on something and their suit rips and they start bleeding and whammo! Here come the sharks! No such luck here. It's just three 20somethings hanging out in a stupid house that occasionally looks like an Apple Store.
I can't say I approve of this movie. I sense that all the characters deserve to die and until I'm assured that's what's happens here, I can't get behind it.