(SPECIAL NOTE: Capsule version of the review is available here.)
When Walter Hill made Red Heat more than a decade ago, idea of East Europeans becoming major players in organised crime looked preposterous. In the decade after the fall of Berlin Wall this vision became reality - East European countries became more than fertile ground for various forms of organised crime, many of them previously unheard in the West. Beyond Forgiveness a.k.a. Blood of the Innocent, 1994 Polish-American action thriller directed by Bob Misiorowski, deals with such reality. Its protagonist, Chicago policeman Frank Wusharsky (played by Thomas Ian Griffith) is searching for the murderers of his brother. The trail leads him to Warsaw where he would gradually discover Russian mafia setting up major business of killing innocent people in order to sell their organs on the black market. This discovery would also endanger Wusharsky's life.
Being shot on Polish locations, Blood of the Innocent had a lot of potential to look at least marginally more interesting than usual by-the-numbers low-budget action film. Script by Charles Cohen actually mentions some problems that are characteristic to the newly democratic countries of Eastern Europe - namely the fact that the old and corrupt Communist Nomenklatura simply transformed itself into new yet equally or even more corrupt post-Communist establishment. However, those issues are barely touched upon, and instead director Misiorowski delivers predictable yet utterly unconvincing story about American superhero that rescues helpless Poles from evil Russkies. To make things even worse, the action scenes are badly directed, the protagonist Thomas Ian Griffith is unconvincing, and otherwise respectable actors like John Rhys-Davies and Rutger Hauer don't seem very enthusiastic about their roles either. Because of that Blood of the Innocent is a wasted effort that potential viewers shouldn't award with their attention.
RATING: 2/10 (-)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on September 25th 2001)
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