Simplistic to say, but when an entertainer dies young they tend to get lionized and the posthumous image in the eyes of their hardcore fan base transcends to the point where everything they did is wonderfully flawless.
With River Phoenix, what I will say nearly three decades after he died is that he was certainly on the way to becoming a very fine actor vs. Being a precociously talented actor. In fairness, it should certainly be noted that Phoenix undertook a wide variety of roles in films displaying a lot of stylistic divergence from one another. Some of those roles worked well, some (to be frank) didn't. As to what Phoenix would have went onto re: acting had he not died when he did, obviously we'll never know. Riverphiles will insist that he would have inevitably reached the box-office heights and popularity of Leonardo DiCaprio or, say, Brad Pitt. Perhaps, yet perhaps not would be another simplistic albeit fair thing to say.
With all of that out of the way, onto Dark Blood. Since Phoenix died before it was completed, for both Riverphiles and for those who simply appreciated his work Dark Blood became something sort of akin to the Lost Ark or (at the very least) a lost curio. Nearly twenty years after Dark Work was shelved after being disbanded roughly 80% of the way into production, director Sluizer managed as best he could to put together a relatively complete vision of what he had in mind or could have realized were it not for Phoenix's passing.
The result? To my way of thinking, even if Dark Blood had been completed it wasn't necessarily going to be a great movie. Or, to put it another way, Dark Blood certainly wasn't some abandoned box-office blockbuster. Nor was it really meant to be, truth be told. What Dark Blood was (and is) is a quirky tale in an unconventional setting, well-shot and capably acted yet without any greater point or purpose beyond any of that. Phoenix delivers a compelling performance which is unlike others he had previously given, which as I mentioned earlier was a characteristic of his re: the roles he chose and types of movies he was in.
In the spirit of fairness and honesty though, had Dark Blood been completed and released into theaters in 1994, I tend to think it wouldn't have made much of a splash at the box office. I would have ended up seeing it either via a video store vhs rental or scheduled later at night on Showtime or Cinemax, watched it once, remarked to myself that the desert settings were well-filmed, the acting was capable, the story it told was a bit weird and by and large would go on to forget about it. In other words, roughly the exact same reaction I had to it in 2012 minus the 'Last Lost Film Of The Late Great River Phoenix' hooplah surrounding it's eventual release.
With River Phoenix, what I will say nearly three decades after he died is that he was certainly on the way to becoming a very fine actor vs. Being a precociously talented actor. In fairness, it should certainly be noted that Phoenix undertook a wide variety of roles in films displaying a lot of stylistic divergence from one another. Some of those roles worked well, some (to be frank) didn't. As to what Phoenix would have went onto re: acting had he not died when he did, obviously we'll never know. Riverphiles will insist that he would have inevitably reached the box-office heights and popularity of Leonardo DiCaprio or, say, Brad Pitt. Perhaps, yet perhaps not would be another simplistic albeit fair thing to say.
With all of that out of the way, onto Dark Blood. Since Phoenix died before it was completed, for both Riverphiles and for those who simply appreciated his work Dark Blood became something sort of akin to the Lost Ark or (at the very least) a lost curio. Nearly twenty years after Dark Work was shelved after being disbanded roughly 80% of the way into production, director Sluizer managed as best he could to put together a relatively complete vision of what he had in mind or could have realized were it not for Phoenix's passing.
The result? To my way of thinking, even if Dark Blood had been completed it wasn't necessarily going to be a great movie. Or, to put it another way, Dark Blood certainly wasn't some abandoned box-office blockbuster. Nor was it really meant to be, truth be told. What Dark Blood was (and is) is a quirky tale in an unconventional setting, well-shot and capably acted yet without any greater point or purpose beyond any of that. Phoenix delivers a compelling performance which is unlike others he had previously given, which as I mentioned earlier was a characteristic of his re: the roles he chose and types of movies he was in.
In the spirit of fairness and honesty though, had Dark Blood been completed and released into theaters in 1994, I tend to think it wouldn't have made much of a splash at the box office. I would have ended up seeing it either via a video store vhs rental or scheduled later at night on Showtime or Cinemax, watched it once, remarked to myself that the desert settings were well-filmed, the acting was capable, the story it told was a bit weird and by and large would go on to forget about it. In other words, roughly the exact same reaction I had to it in 2012 minus the 'Last Lost Film Of The Late Great River Phoenix' hooplah surrounding it's eventual release.