Based on the comic of the same name, Bloodshot follows Ray Garrison, a marine who was murdered along with his wife but is resurrected by a team of scientists from a mysterious corporation. Enhanced with nanotechnology, he becomes a superhuman, biotech killing machine called Bloodshot and trains alongside other superhuman soldiers. However, Ray soon begins to recall various memories of his past over and over, and slowly attempts to unravel the mystery of his death and the mystery of the corporation that brought him back.
I didn’t grow up reading the Bloodshot comics so, similar to the Witcher, I was going in mostly blind, though I did manage to research a bit on the character to get the basics. The character and the stories he’s involved in seem to be really interesting and his appearance definitely makes him stand out among other comic characters. So how did cinematic debut of Valiant Comics turn out? It sucked.
A part of me was hoping that this would be another 2020 surprise or maybe just a fun mindless action movie but it didn’t turn out to be any of those. Vin Diesel delivers a serviceable performance but I’ve seen him do a lot better even in other movies. His character is pretty much a tool, both literally and figuratively, with very little attempts to add depth of any kind.
Eiza Gonzalez delivered a good performance but she barely does much more than being the rebel. Sam Heughan, famous for his awesome role in Outlander, is wasted in this role playing a forgettable Knob with robotic legs. Guy Pierce plays the cliche business suit man leader guy, and then you have Lamorne Morris as this geeky hacker guy.
Basically what I’m getting at is that there is no such thing as character development in this movie, everyone is just an object on a game board that is being labeled as a movie. There’s a tool, there’s a rebel, there’s a knob, there’s a business suit, and there’s a hacker. No attempts are made to make these characters interesting by any means. And they are all involved in a story we have seen before in many other 90s films hitting all the cliches you can think of.
And they had the audacity to have some of the characters even point out the cliches in the film itself as a way of being self aware. Several comic book films have done this but at least the way they did it was funny and entertaining. Here it wasn’t it just shows how lazy the writing was. And there were just tons of exposition dumps littered in this movie telling us everything rather than showing. But what did I expect from the guy who wrote Fantasy Island and Truth Or Dare.
Oh yeah and in case you are wondering: yes the trailer did indeed give away almost the entire movie. No fucks were given in the marketing for this movie so you pretty much know what to expect for a majority of the movie, which made the experience absolutely boring and aggravating.
It also never remains consistent in tone and you can’t tell if it’s trying to be serious or fun. The way this movie is filmed is also a complete drag, having so many jumbled cuts and action scenes that look cool but are never given proper focus. And when action does get focused on it’s never the cool scenes. It is just boring PG-13 violence that has no variety other than some interesting visuals.
VFX wise this movie is 50/50. The nanites and regeneration aspect of the movie is done really well and some of the sci fi machinery used in this movie does set it apart from other films similar to this. But then you also get CGI bodies fighting each other in god awful slow motion where you can easily see the unrefined effects glaring you in the face.
This certainly isn’t the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but at the same time they had a big opportunity here to offer something new and fresh to comic book movies, and they wasted it. I like Vin Diesel, and I understand that he was very passionate about this character, but honestly that passion means nothing if you are given a lazy screenplay and have a studio that couldn’t care less about giving us a good movie. Regardless, this is not worth watching in theaters, and there are other movies out now that deserve to be seen instead of this. I’m going to give Bloodshot a D.
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