"Bloodshot" review

With "Fast & Furious 9" victim to Covid-19, this is the only Vin Diesel fix we have.




"Bloodshot" is an odd duck of a bad movie, not because it's particularly fascinating or memorable in and of itself but rather for the way it had all the potential to go to an extreme of either end of the quality spectrum, yet somehow lands squarely in the banal yet inoffensive territory of passable at best mediocrity.

Based on the Valiant comics character of the same name, Vin Diesel stars as former soldier murdered on a mission, Ray Garrison, who's granted a second chance at life when the donation of his body to a tech company specializing in the development of bleeding edge technology, including nanotech, grants him a full revival with the added bonus of nanite blood capable of enhancing his strength and stamina as well as healing him almost instantaneously.

Seeking to avenge what seems to be the death of himself and his wife, Garrison is pulled into a bigger conspiracy when he finds out his recollection of his loss may not quite match up with reality as he knows it.

The first 25 minutes or so of "Bloodshot" actually work to surprising effect.

Although the aforementioned conspiracy is broadcast from a mile away by a round of smarmy performances, along with the trailer for the movie full on spoiling it, the commentary that it provides on the very concept of action hero origins, unintentional or otherwise, is actually a fun set up and a clever hook for a subsequent feature.

Unfortunately, that subsequent feature reveals that the excruciating dialogue in that first 20 minutes was not the stylistic choice the filmmakers would have you believe that it is.

As the second act of "Bloodshot" begins to settle in, a more traditional superhero narrative begins to set in with a lack of any sort of admirable polish or sincere imagination akin to the genres growing pains of the 90s, with duds like "The Phantom" or "Steel."

That's not to say that "Bloodshot" is anywhere near as bad as those films but that's mainly because the whole affair comes across as too well resourced to fail but lacking in any sense of ambition, misplaced or otherwise, to churn out something memorably good or bad.

Some of the action set pieces are cleverly conceived but undercut by poor directorial choices, shrouding impact and choreography in a blitzkrieg of poor lighting, bad camera work, and CGI that would be generously called rough.

The movie leans into spectacle that's not particularly spectacular and all sense of storytelling becomes a resulting casualty as story arcs given focus are kind of left to just dangle, leaving everything to end on a note that would be anti-climactic even if the cast was allowed the material needed to give decent performances.

Even Vin Diesel’s unique physicality does little to provide the movie with the life it desperately needs, as the flickers of charisma and range he's occasionally allowed to let rise to the service are snuffed out by a script so terrible it would have been blasé if it were a TNT original movie from nearly 2 decades ago.

Perhaps this all sounds a bit too harsh but the truth is that the best and worst thing about the movie is that it just never makes you care enough to get angry at it.

Derived from a source material that is part of a lengthy shared superhero universe, the movie had all the potential to be the next ill conceived car in the trainwreck that is Hollywood's cinematic universe bandwagon but reins in the worst tendencies of even that idea by having the dignity to be a functional enough stand alone feature.

That's "Bloodshot," in a nutshell; the cinematic equivalent of eating a tasteless fiber and protein supplement as a meal. Occasionally tasteless and unpleasant but not so revolting as to wanting to actively dissociate from experiencing it, even as you register you wish you were in the middle of something better.

4 CGI Blood Infusions out of 10