IN THE BLOOD is an action vehicle for flavour-of-the-month martial arts star Gina Carano, the mixed martial arts fighter who Steven Soderbergh put into a film with HAYWIRE. This one was shot in Puerto Rico and is a gender twist on your usual low budget fight flick, with Carano's husband disappearing during their holiday in the Caribbean and our starlet swearing vengeance on those responsible.The plot is very derivative stuff indeed but I didn't find this too much of a problem considering that's the norm for the genre. Carano's acting also leaves something to be desired; she's not great at emotion and appears to be on autopilot at other times. However, in the fight scenes she's very convincing, snappy and violent, and that's what counts.The story manages to shoehorn in regular action usually involving hand-to-hand combat with various thugs and goons and it's all well choreographed and realistic; just hits to take foes down rather than any fancy stuff. The ending is a bit underwhelming but I can go with that. The supporting cast includes minor parts for Danny Trejo, Stephen Lang, and Treat Williams, and a nice supporting turn for Luis Guzman as a corrupt cop.

I live in Mexico, and while this is the Caribbean, the blending of the bad guys and the cops was too real. The common people have no control, and the narcos and the police find a way to work together. They feel there is no reason to shoot each other when they can all make money the easy way. Everyone who has anything is corrupt in Latin America. They protect what's theirs and to hell with everyone else. In The Blood got that right.In The Blood is a boring, predictable story. It's a 4 or 5 star movie, except for 3 performances. Gina Carano is no Meryl Streep, but she is totally believable as the loyal, ass-kicking wife who will go to any lengths to protect her guy. The fight scenes are great, and worth slogging through the swamp of poor dialog and the formula plot. The second performance that exceeds expectations is Luis Guzman as the police chief. He is perfect as the malignant, corrupt official with a face of stone. Then he is perfect when things don't go his way. Both his arrogance and vulnerability capture the essence of the Latina male.The final excellent performance belongs to Stephen Lang as the Flashback Dad. How did Gina Carano's character get so tough? Stephen Lang plays Gina's outlaw dad. The tough love he gives her is intense and believable. He's only got a couple scenes, but then are intense. Whether he's playing a civil war general (Gettysburg), a mercenary trying to steal a planet from the nativesDanny Trejo also gets to play another knife wielding bad guy. Danny Trejo is always good, but he's like a Latin John Wayne. He plays himself perfectly every time. You can't watch In The Blood like a normal movie, because it doesn't work like that. It's a boring story. You watch it to see the lovely Gina Carano beat up the bad guys and look good doing it. You watch it to see Luis Guzman play a villain so despicable you feel no regret when things don't go his way. Most of all, you watch In The Blood for the brief moments that Stephan Lang dominates the screen. 3 great performances. Skip the rest.

In the Blood is an action film with a mediocre screenplay and insipid direction, but what ends up making it passable is the credibility and charisma displayed by Gina Carano in the leading role. I had honestly thought her career was going to be on top after Haywire (that very entertaining action B-movie directed by an A-list filmmaker). Unfortunately, that didn't happen. With the exception of a solid (but excessively brief) participation in Fast & Furious 6, she hasn't been involved in any high profile movies. Is that fault of the legendary Hollywood machismo, or of a simple matter of economy? It's true that Carano doesn't attract a lot of spectators, but she certainly has fans (including me), either as an actress or as a MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) fighter. I think that the machismo option is more likely in this case. There have been various action heroines in TV (from Xena to Sidney Bristow), but for some reason, they can't still fully make it in cinema. And if there's someone who deserves it, that one is definitely Carano, not only because of her physical development, but also because she's an excellent actress. For better or for worse, the main audience of the action films is male, and Hollywood executives don't think a character who defies the traditional female girlfriend/wife or defenseless victim will be accepted. I think that the spectators are willing to support that evolutionary step in action cinema, but Hollywood is too slow regarding paradigm changes (just look at how long they took to accept digital distribution), so we might end up seeing Carano's daughter or granddaughter finding a more equitable field to fight against terrorists, drug dealers and Russian mobsters (or whoever the trendy villains will be in 20 years from now... they will probably be Google executives). But well, leaving that feminist tirade aside, In the Blood isn't a very good film, and Carano's performance is the main aspect which makes it moderately entertaining and worthy of a slight recommendation despite its mediocrity.

After getting married, Ava and Derek go on a exotic island to spend their honeymoon. One evening Ava is approached by a stranger who asks her if she wants to have fun and invites the couple to try an extreme method and travel from an mountain to another hanging up-side down and held by a rope. They accept the challenge without knowing that it's all a set-up in witch one of them will become a victim to a local shady man.Derek ends up in a hospital but Ava can't find him anywhere and now she must call on the police officers to help her recover her missing husband. But the police aren't very acute and it seems that they don't want to jump and help her so now Ava must seek for justice on her own.A very surprising action movie that seems to have a few dull moments and those don't last only for a couple on minutes. In rest there is plenty of action and moments that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The beginning maybe it is a bit rushed, but after that the landscapes are wonderful, so bad are only short sequences. The only issue is that Gina Carano and Cam Gigandet don't make a convincing couple on the screen. The chemistry between the two suffers and they don't spend too much time together in the movie in order to be a believable love story but excepting this factor the film could be a perfect choice to spend your afternoon.