Michael Ironside is not Jack Nicholson.

Today I watched Blood Money, a very uniquely named film from 1999. Directed by Michael Ironside, written by Michael Ironside, and starring Michael Ironside, Blood Money also goes by the name The Arrangement. Not to be confused with the 2017 series The Arrangement, the 1969 film The Arrangement, or the 2010 series The Arrangement. Now Michael Ironside is not Jack Nicholson, but if you squint your eyes a little bit you can pretend that this is a Jack Nicholson movie.

Blood Money stars Michael Ironside as Jack Connor, okay you’re just gonna call him Jack and predicate my jokes. Jack Connor and Leper (Currie Graham) are cops investigating a string of murders including a fellow officer. The film follows the two men as the talk cop shit, do cop shit, and live and breath cop shit.

But who cares about Michael Ironside, this film has one of my favorite actors of all time. Yes I’m talking about Richard Riehle, the man who coined the phrase “we gots to have some law” in the award-winning Ross Patterson film Helen Keller vs. the Nightwolves as Sheriff Ryan. Kevin McNulty is here of Time Cop fame, he plays Agent Dackhouse who literally everybody hates because he’s a fed and kind of an asshole. The bad guy Willy Norton is played by George Buza, a guy who looks like he should be in bigger pictures but has spent the last forty plus years in a very successful career of complete shit.

Look, I’m not going to fault the guy for wanting to pay the bills. I’m just saying he’s got the chops to go bigger. But the question is can the two agents keep their only witness, stripper Candy (Lori Petty) safe from the bad guys wanting to kill her? Probably, this is a police procedural film after all, it tends to have a good ending.

Blood Money is such a film I watched it until the credits rolled. There’s nothing particularly wrong with it, but unlike 1974’s Blood Money which combines western coolness with Chinese kung fu slapstick, there’s nothing exactly standout here either. It released direct to video in 1999 in America and it shows. The kind of film you agree on because the movie you want isn’t in stock, and when you’re done watching it you’re not upset about spending the $3 at Blockbuster but you’re pretty sure it was a better deal than renting Ace Ventura yet again.

You may notice I’m not talking much about the film and that’s because there’s not much to say. Blood Money is by the numbers. It’s like a completely expected slice of pizza from the same pizzeria you’ve been going to for the last ten years, reliable but also cheap and edible quality. It’s like a good dump that leaves you kinda hungry but also it’s three a.m. on a work night and you know it’s really better to go back to bed hungry than actually eat something. A thimble of orange juice left in the container on a really hot day. Did someone say dinner time?

Rating: C