Blood - Telegraph In Blood, we have an overcooked television police procedural, cheating on the intensity by forcing a series" worth of developments into 88 minutes of film. We're by the sea - up Wirral way - where detective brothers Joe and Chrissie Fairburn (Paul Bettany and Stephen Graham, betraying no obvious genetic similarities) elect to take extreme measures upon learning the man they've accused of killing a teenage girl is poised to walk free. When a colleague (Mark Strong) brings in a likelier suspect, the brothers are seized with pangs of conscience; the film, meanwhile, begins filling up with ghosts, demons and superfluous supporting characters. Director Nick Murphy, whose handsome 2011 chiller The Awakening suggested a certain flair for lights-down location work, makes atmospheric stages out of the Art Deco station house and one crime scene in a disused picture palace. But his actors give it more heft than the flimsy material can really bear. Bettany and Graham insistently clench their teeth and punch the walls. In their quieter moments, they do those impulsive, audience-losing things third-rate dirty cops do, like burying suspects alive in the hope of landing a confession that wouldn't ever stand up in court. In a squad car's back seat, Brian Cox, as the muddled Fairburn Sr, is but a plot device, mumbling through "Danny Boy" and dreaming of better scripts to come.