In the drizzly, grayish-blue policier Blood, Paul Bettany plays a detective who kills a suspect in a fit of anger. When it becomes obvious that the man was innocent, Bettany finds himself caught in a double web of guilt and paranoia. Screenwriter Bill Gallagher has told this story before, as the 2004 BBC series Conviction; for this adaptation, he excises much of the original’s knottiness in order to focus on a handful of core themes. The result is a tight, raincoats-flapping-in-the-wind crime drama whose only major misstep is the decision to dramatize Bettany’s inner turmoil by having him interact with the ghost of his victim. This move is both redundant and counterproductive because it weakens one of the screenplay’s central conceits—the way Bettany’s guilt is shared and experienced by other characters.
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