Bloodshot (2020) Columbia/Action-Sci-Fi RT: 109 minutes Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence, some suggestive material, language) Director: David S.F. Wilson Screenplay: Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer Music: Steve Jablonsky Cinematography: Jacques Jouffret Release date: March 13, 2020 (US) Cast: Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Sam Heughan, Toby Kebbell, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, Talulah Riley, Alex Hernandez, Siddharth Dhananjay, Johannes Haukur Johannesson. Box Office: $10M* (US)/$37.1M (World)
Rating: ** ½
I’m at a loss over what to say about Bloodshot, a supremely silly sci-fi actioner starring Vin Diesel (the Fast & Furious flicks) in his usual grunt-and-lumber mode. Should I recommend it or not? On the one hand, it’s a half-decent matinee picture with a ton of PG-13 level action, violence and mayhem. On the other hand, it has a convoluted plot that steals ideas from Universal Soldier, Terminator 2, RoboCop, Total Recall, Runaway (the 1984 Tom Selleck movie) and probably a dozen other action movies from the 80s and 90s. It’s easily one of the silliest movies I’ve sat though lately. It’s also as hollow a viewing experience as a rerun of The A-Team. I didn’t mind watching it, but I’d rather have been elsewhere. If this makes no sense to you, you should probably avoid Bloodshot altogether.
I’ll do my best to describe the plot, but let me warn you that watching the actual movie has a serious side effect. Audience members may experience a loss of IQ points while viewing Bloodshot. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. While on vacation, soldier Ray Garrison (Diesel) and his wife Gina (Riley, Westworld) are kidnapped by a psycho, Martin Axe (Kebbel, Kong: Skull Island), demanding information about one of his previous missions. When he doesn’t get it, he kills them both. Garrison wakes up later in the laboratory of Dr. Harting (Pearce, Memento) and promptly learns that he holds the honor of being the first human successfully reanimated using nanotechnology created by the mad scientist. He replaced his blood with microscopic spider-like creatures that instantly regenerate tissue when he’s injured. He’s stronger, faster and practically invincible. In other words, he’s now a super-soldier.
Not long after his rebirth, Garrison/Bloodshot starts experiencing flashbacks to his wife’s murder. It’s obviously a glitch in the system, but he manages to escape from the facility before Harting can do something to fix it. He sets out to find and kill Axe which he does after intercepting a convoy and killing all of the bad guy’s henchmen and guards. He’s taken back to the lab where it’s revealed that (get ready) he was implanted with a false memory. He’s nothing more than an instrument of death who can be programmed to kill whoever. All Harting and his team of techies have to do is change the identity of the killer in the simulation and voila!
Things get kind of confusing from here which is when Bloodshot starts to fall apart. Now I could devote the next paragraph of two to criticizing the writing and script, but why bother? I suspect that the target audience doesn’t care about such things. It, like other movies of its ilk, exists only to provide action junkies with a fix. The scenes between the big action set-pieces are merely filler. Let me just leave it at this; Bloodshot is as dumb as they come. It makes any Stallone or Schwarzenegger vehicle from the 80s look like an exercise in intellectualism.
Diesel basically plays Diesel which means his “performance” is limited to grunting his lines, lumbering around and creating mayhem wherever he goes. He has the emotional range of a wooden Indian outside a cigar store placing him in good company with the monosyllabic action stars of the Reagan and Bush eras. In his defense, he’s a couple of notches above Steven Seagal. Pearce nibbles on the scenery as the mad doctor with an evil agenda, but the Big Ham Award goes to Kebbel based solely on the scene where he does a crazy dance to The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” before going to work on Garrison and Gina. That guy belongs between two slices of Swiss cheese and rye bread slathered with spicy mustard. Eiza Gonzalez of the F&F spin-off Hobbs & Shaw plays KT, a fellow enhanced soldier who joins Garrison/Bloodshot’s cause after learning what her boss is really about. She’s okay. Outlander’s Sam Heughan shows up as a team member outfitted with metal legs that make him superfast. He’s okay too. Honestly, Bloodshot is one of those movies where acting isn’t really a priority. None of the roles call for nuance or whatever. Let’s change the subject.
For me, the real bummer about Bloodshot is the CGI. There’s a lot of it and it’s terrible. At times, it felt more like a video game than a movie. It constantly took me out of the picture. I really wanted to like this one especially since it recalls some of my favorite action movies as a teen and twentysomething. Instead, it gave me the kind of headache that comes with CGI overload. And while newbie director David S.F. Wilson might know how to stage an action scene, the editing ruins them. They’re extremely jumpy and confusing. They look like they were edited by a Cuisinart. So it is that the climactic elevator scene with Bloodshot going up against a guy wearing mechanical tentacles that grab onto the sides is a visual mess.
For all that’s wrong with it, I can’t quite bring myself to hate Bloodshot. It has its good points. Besides spotting the other movies it rips off, the story itself isn’t too bad. It also has a sense of humor about itself. It knows exactly what it is and isn’t above joking about it. Listen to this one conversation between Harting and one of young techies about where he gets the ideas for the simulated scenarios. Although not explicitly mentioned, the crazy dance is right out of Reservoir Dogs. I can’t quite bring myself to recommend Bloodshot either but if you must see it, it’s a half-decent matinee picture.
*= This is one of the movies released right before the big COVID shutdown. It played theatrically for less than a week. Sony released it digitally on March 24.
