Punk godfather Iggy Pop takes his first leading movie role in contemporary film noir thriller Blood Orange. But given that he's playing an ageing rocker his part isn't much of a stretch. Still, his craggy cool does work in the film's favour and makes up for his slender thespian skills.
His character is a rich, half-blind recluse who is shacked up with a much younger wife (former Grange Hill starlet Kacey Barnfield playing the film's voluptuous femme fatale) in a stunning modernist villa somewhere in Spain.
"Slipping out of grasp"
With a resentful, disinherited stepson (Ben Lamb) and a hunky pool boy (Antonio Magro) thrown into the mix, the plot twists this way and that, the characters' motives always slipping out of grasp. Yet the viewer will probably be a jump ahead of the plot, all the same.
It's very stylishly filmed, but first-time writer-director Toby Tobias's script isn't tight enough for his movie to keep us fully in its grip.
Certificate 15. Runtime 83 mins. Director Toby Tobias
Blood Orange debuts on Sky Cinema Premiere on Thursday 2 March and is available on DVD from Metrodome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zYaA3V2KXY
