Overview
- Angelina Jolie wrote and directed Without Blood, a film adapted from Alessandro Baricco’s novel that stages a long-delayed encounter between a woman who survived a wartime massacre and one of the men involved.
- Reviewers widely singled out Salma Hayek and Demián Bichir for strong, sustained performances, especially in a central, extended restaurant scene that anchors most of the film’s drama.
- Critics praised technical elements such as Seamus McGarvey’s golden-hued cinematography and careful sound mixing but questioned the frequent flashbacks as intrusive rather than illuminating.
- Several reviewers faulted the film’s roughly 80-minute runtime and its decision to stage much of the action on studio sets, with some saying the deliberate ambiguity about the conflict robs the story of needed sociopolitical context.
- The film’s reception is mixed: some critics view Jolie’s lean, poetic approach as a focused moral meditation, while others call it insubstantial; the movie follows Jolie’s earlier war-themed work and remains in theatrical circulation as U.S. coverage unfolds.