Cold Blooded has a
simple hook. A cop (Zoie Palmer) and jewel thief (Ryan Robbins) must fight to
survive when a ruthless gangster traps them in a hospital wing. Things get
pretty dumb pretty quickly when they are forced to work together when the cop
loses a hand. If one of the main
conflicts of your film involves playing hot potato with a severed hand
throughout the final half of your movie, you've probably got some script
issues. Cold Blooded has an interesting premise and a solid lead character
but can't quite overcome a lack of tension or its noticeable low budget production
limitations.
I have to give writer/director Jason Lapeyre some credit for
making a kick ass heroine in lady cop Frances Jane. It's not often that we are
graced with an honest-to-goodness, fleshed-out female character that can also
hold her own in a fight. Zoie
Palmer does her best with what she's given, which unfortunately isn't a whole
hell of a lot. The rest of the
cast struggles to create tension when there simply isn't any for any of their
characters. The villain is boring
and one note while the story simply doesn't deliver anything more than some
silly violence every now and then.
Not helping matters is the odd lighting that makes each
scene look like a soap opera. With better pacing and more tension, this could
have been a small but effective thriller with a strong female protagonist. As
it is, Cold Blooded can't muster
enough energy to propel its cool premise past the 30-minute mark. A glorified
hide and seek narrative should at the very least be suspenseful; instead we get
a snoozefest.
