Review: Bloodshot

Let’s be honest: this is not the film I would have chosen as my last theatre review for the next few weeks. I don’t know where you call home, but living in Washington state, basically everything is shut down, effective yesterday. Schools are closed. Social gatherings are banned. Even the Uber Eats driver left food on my porch without knocking on the door (that one might be because he’s a dick, but the jury’s still out). My wife and I had our tickets purchased to go see Onward first thing yesterday morning. So close! (I heard it’s really good, and look forward to seeing it eventually). News broke late Sunday night that we were basically supposed to hunker down for the foreseeable future and let Covid-19 run its course. So here I am. It’s not all bad news though. Well, Bloodshot wasn’t all that great. And it got cold and snowed again. And my rock climbing gym is closed…..but the good news is that I basically have time to catch up on delayed streaming reviews! So if you’re quarantined like me and find yourself just wanting to waste a few minutes here and there, come back to visit over the next couple of weeks to get the inside scoop on some recommended streaming shows 😀
Video game visual effects artist Dave Wilson makes his directorial debut, bringing Vin “Not The Rock” Diesel out of The Fast and Furious and MCU franchises for the first time in over three years. Ray Garrison (Diesel) is a soldier who finds himself on the wrong end of a bullet, but wakes up some time later to find that his body has been sold to Rising Spirit Tech (RST) and enhanced with nanite technology to become the first super soldier of his kind. As he regains some memory, all he wants is revenge. But as the audience soon realizes, his revenge is nothing but a hoax, engineered as false memories by RST in order to eliminate past employees. Slowly but surely, Ray also learns the secret behind his new superpowers (which includes punching through walls and the ability to be blown up without dying) and, with the help of a few new friends, finds a way to release his mind and body to instead go after his captors.
There’s not much to give as far as a plot is concerned because honestly there wasn’t much to the movie. Ray learns that his new life is a lie, and he turns on the people responsible for lying to him. Pretty simple. But it’s not just for a lack of plot that I was disappointed with Bloodshot. The shots from the trailers and corresponding movie poster looked completely bad ass. And we all know that as vanilla as Vin Diesel is when it comes to character depth (Xander Cage, Riddick, & Dominic Toretto are basically the same dude in different film franchises…fight me), he pulls off one delicious vanilla flavor. Who cares about acting range when you can consistently pull off a low, gravel voice, slow speech, and deadpan stare?! But all those shots from the movie came from the same two pretty cool action sequences, and the rest of it was either tech-y talk or “put my thing down, flip it and reverse it” (ti esrever dna ti pilf, nwod gniht ym tup). Obviously I wasn’t a big fan. Not knowing the Valiant Comics character though, I guess maybe I’m not as let down as some comic fans probably are?
I’m glad the movie wasn’t a long, drawn out affair, but even at 109 minutes it felt it’s length. Guy Pearce was a pretty standard Guy Pearce villain (i.e. Iron Man 3, The Count of Monte Cristo) rather than a stand-out villain (i.e. Lawless), and the supporting cast were basically used as cannon fodder for Diesel to take out on his way up the chain of command. This will be an easy throw-away for Diesel’s long-running action career, but it was good to see him step out of the recent repeat roles. Fun fact, Vin Diesel beat out Jared Leto to play the titular character…maybe more of a funny fact, because these two dudes could not be more different. Anyway, this one isn’t a recommendation from me but if you see it, feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts. My guess is that it won’t stay long in theatres with a worldwide opening of only $24 million, and who knows how many theatres around the world will actually be open to show it amid the pandemic? Again, thanks for reading and following the blog and liking posts and leaving comments and all that jazz. [I am Groot!]