TORONTO, Canada—Two horseback riders emerge over a hill on the vast plains, five pursuers right at their heels. Gunshots ring out, and one man topples off his steed. The second is no more fortunate; lassoed and pulled off his stallion, he’s dragged behind his attacker for what seems like an eternity.

The camera trails behind him, capturing this in a widescreen panorama that’s all the more horrifying for being so strikingly composed. In voiceover, a narrator speaks about the need to “break up the Earth” in order to create “a better world” where everyone has the right to happiness and dignity—a destiny that, it’s clear, is not reserved for these unfortunate individuals.

The identities of these murdered men is never revealed by Without Blood, and that’s in keeping with its wholesale haziness. An adaptation of Alessandro Baricco’s novel of the same name by writer/director Angelina Jolie, this period piece—premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival—is dogged in its lack of specificity.

While that’s intended to render it a timeless parable about the lasting impact of violence on both victims and victimizers, the wounded and the unscathed, it results in initial confusion and, afterwards, frustrating thinness. By choosing to reside in abstraction, it imparts only generic and empty truths.

Following its initial scene, Without Blood segues to an older gentleman named Manuel (Alfredo Herrera) relaxing on his porch, his elbows on the railing and his mind lost in thought. Jolie........

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