Here’s a fun fact that escaped us in amidst the flurry of fall festival activity: Guillaume Canet‘s sprawling crime story saga “Blood Ties” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival running two hours and twenty-four minutes, but by the time it hit Toronto International Film Festival, it had been reduced somewhat significantly to two hours and seven minutes. We’re not sure what exactly got trimmed or why, but it seems our observation in our review that “there is a different and possibly shorter edit of this movie that is probably much better” wasn’t unique. And it seems that shorter cut is going into wide release…
…at least in France, where the picture is opening at the end of month, and a bunch of new character posters and images have landed online. The star studded movie—Clive Owen, Billy Crudup, Mila Kunis, Matthias Schoenaerts, Zoe Saldana, Marion Cotillard and James Caan—tells the story of two estranged brothers, one a criminal, the other a cop, whose lives come crashing together when the ex-con is released and starts plotting his next score. We’re curious to see if the condensed version fixes some of the issues we had with version we saw, and this cast alone makes it worth a watch regardless.
“Blood Ties” opens overseas on October 30th. But as of yet, there is no U.S. distributor. [AlloCine]
that still of Marion is amazing…wow
Roadside Attractions (via Lionsgate) acquired "Blood Ties" for U.S. distribution at Cannes.
It does have US distribution, Roadside Attractions bought it at Cannes.
I don't know, judging from Matt Goldberg's review over at Collider the new, shorter cut is worse than the longer one with less character development, but maybe it was always that way and they just cut out some subplots. I don't know but am still interested.