a review of 夺命血玫瑰

ℍ𝕆𝕆ℙ𝕋𝕆𝔹𝔼ℝ 𝔼𝕃𝔼𝕍𝔼ℕ ℕ𝕀𝔾ℍ𝕋 𝕋𝕎𝔼ℕ𝕋𝕐-𝕋𝕎𝕆: Not *quite* a horror movie by my reckoning but I'm counting it anyway. Possibly the most extremely 1970s looking murder mystery to be shot in the mid-1980s, though I appreciate both Donald Sutherland's performance as a hard-boiled (and not entirely abstinent) priest and the way the script (written by Elmore Leonard!) trusts us to put one and one together with some of the transitions between scenes, as when Sutherland and Belinda Bauer's characters joke about going for drinks after-hours and we immediately cut to them drinking coffee at a diner and pointedly *not talking to each other* the next morning. The murder mystery plot isn't necessarily the most air-tight thing, but it does help to illustrate some of the distinct social flaws of Catholic doctrine when it comes to both the sanctity of confession and the church's deep-seated patriarchal structures. It feels like a thin-blue-line/closed-ranks police thriller set entirely within the clergy, and that's a fun spin on the formula.