BLOOD WORK. Warner Bros., 2002. Clint Eastwood, Jeff Daniels, Anjelica Huston, Wanda De Jesus. Based on the novel by Michael Connelly. Directed by Clint Eastwood.

   Clint Eastwood directs, and stars in, Blood Work, a rather captivating police procedural from the aughts. Based on the book by Michael Connelly, the film features Eastwood as a retired FBI agent who returns to work under highly unusual conditions. After suffering a heart attack a couple years ago while chasing the Code Killer, Terry McCaleb (Eastwood) is recovering from a heart transplant and living a slow-paced life on his boat in the Long Beach harbor.

   All that changes when Graciella Rivers (Wanda De Jesus) comes to him with a request: find the person who murdered her sister, Gloria. McCaleb is perplexed. Why him? He’s retired. Only when he’s told that he is the recipient of Rivers’ heart does he decide to take the case.

   He’s retired, of course. So all of this police work on his part is unofficial and puts him at loggerheads with the LAPD and with his physician (Anjelica Huston), who thinks he’s putting his life at risk. Still, McCaleb is determined to see this through to the very end. It’s only when he begins to dig deeper that he realizes that the Code Killer, his long time nemesis, may be back and playing a deadly game with him.

   Because McCaleb doesn’t drive, he has to rely upon his neighbor, Jasper “Buddy” Noone (Jeff Daniels) to ferry him around town while he conducts his unofficial investigation. The chemistry between these two leads is solid, with Daniels really leaning into the role of a boat bum with too much time on his hands.

   Aside from being a police procedural, Blood Work is very much a character study of a man at the end of his career who realizes that he has a lot of unfinished business to tend to. There’s a whole subplot about McCaleb’s guilt and belief that he is undeserving of the heart he has been gifted and his sorrow that there is a kid on a heart transplant waiting list, but it never adds up to very much.

   As it turns out, however, the heart transplant itself becomes the key to unlocking not only Gloria’s murder, but the dark machinations of the Code Killer. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this one, even if it was slow in the beginning. The direction is lean and to the point, something for which Eastwood is known.