{"id":4318,"date":"2024-10-05T18:11:48","date_gmt":"2024-10-05T18:11:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=4318"},"modified":"2024-10-12T22:02:58","modified_gmt":"2024-10-12T22:02:58","slug":"bloodshot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/10\/05\/bloodshot\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloodshot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Bloodshot <\/strong>(2020)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Action-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence, some suggestive material, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David S.F. Wilson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Steve Jablonsky\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jacques Jouffret\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 13, 2020 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Sam Heughan, Toby Kebbell, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, Talulah Riley, Alex Hernandez, Siddharth Dhananjay, Johannes Haukur Johannesson.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $10M* (US)\/$37.1M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: ** \u00bd<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m at a loss over what to say about Bloodshot<\/strong>, 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\u2019s 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\u2019s easily one of the silliest movies I\u2019ve sat though lately. It\u2019s also as hollow a viewing experience as a rerun of The A-Team. I didn\u2019t mind watching it, but I\u2019d rather have been elsewhere. If this makes no sense to you, you should probably avoid Bloodshot<\/strong> altogether.<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019ll 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<\/strong>. Don\u2019t say I didn\u2019t 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\u2019t 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\u2019s injured. He\u2019s stronger, faster and practically invincible. In other words, he\u2019s now a super-soldier.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Not long after his rebirth, Garrison\/Bloodshot starts experiencing flashbacks to his wife\u2019s murder. It\u2019s 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\u2019s henchmen and guards. He\u2019s taken back to the lab where it\u2019s revealed that (get ready) he was implanted with a false memory. He\u2019s 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!<\/p>\n

\u00a0Things get kind of confusing from here which is when Bloodshot<\/strong> 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\u2019t 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<\/strong> is as dumb as they come. It makes any Stallone or Schwarzenegger vehicle from the 80s look like an exercise in intellectualism.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Diesel basically plays Diesel which means his \u201cperformance\u201d 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\u2019s 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\u2019 \u201cPsycho Killer\u201d 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\u2019s cause after learning what her boss is really about. She\u2019s okay. Outlander\u2019s Sam Heughan shows up as a team member outfitted with metal legs that make him superfast. He\u2019s okay too. Honestly, Bloodshot<\/strong> is one of those movies where acting isn\u2019t really a priority. None of the roles call for nuance or whatever. Let\u2019s change the subject.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For me, the real bummer about Bloodshot<\/strong> is the CGI. There\u2019s a lot of it and it\u2019s 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0For all that\u2019s wrong with it, I can\u2019t quite bring myself to hate Bloodshot<\/strong>. It has its good points. Besides spotting the other movies it rips off, the story itself isn\u2019t too bad. It also has a sense of humor about itself. It knows exactly what it is and isn\u2019t 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\u2019t quite bring myself to recommend Bloodshot<\/strong> either but if you must see it, it\u2019s a half-decent matinee picture.<\/p>\n

*= 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.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bloodshot (2020)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Columbia\/Action-Sci-Fi\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 109 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (intense sequences of violence, some suggestive material, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: David S.F. Wilson\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Steve Jablonsky\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Jacques Jouffret\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: March 13, 2020 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Sam Heughan, Toby Kebbell, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, Talulah Riley, Alex Hernandez, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4576,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sci-fi-fantasy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/Bloodshot-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4318"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4577,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4318\/revisions\/4577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}