Blood Ties

Snivelling punk Spano is a coke-snorting American mafioso. Lo Bianco is a Sicilian judge putting the heat on Palermo's drug-trafficking mobsters. And good guy Davis, who 'owes' the Mafia, is a respectable New England academic 'persuaded' by Spano to fly to the old country, wheedle his way into cousin Lo Bianco's affections, and kill him, in return for the life of his kidnapped father. The film (a feature carved out of a four-hour TV series, and cut by a further 22 minutes for release in Britain) is a collection of Coppola-derived clichés. The action consists of repeated macho standoffs and routine car chases, the women are disposable chattels, and the performances range from the wooden set-jaw squinting of Davis to the effulgent Method mannerisms of Spano at his most sweatily unappealing, with little in between. Lo Bianco alone reveals true class.