Bloodshot

Bloodshot

Starring Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris

Directed by David Wilson

In the early 2000s, comic book film adaptations began hitting the big screen, with mixed results to say the least.  Now, when you look back at films like "Hulk," "Daredevil" and "Elektra," you wonder how they managed to keep the genre going long enough to craft the MCU.  "Bloodshot" falls into that category - a superhero comic book film that seems more suited for the early 2000s than 2020 in practically every sense of the word: it's bland, forgettable, simplistic, typical, and worst of all filled with laughably bad CGI.

Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) is a Marine who is captured and tortured, but then witnesses his wife's murder before he himself is killed by Martin Axe (Toby Kebbell), and is brought back to life by a shady organization known as Rising Spirit Tech led by Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce).  Garrison has been injected with nanite technology that continually repairs his body when he's injured, and at first he has no memories of his former life, but as he converses with fellow formerly dead soldier KT (Eiza Gonzalez), he begins to have memories of Axe killing him and his wife, and sets out to get his revenge.  Yet his memories might not be what they appear to be, as Harting has an ulterior motive for bringing Ray back from the dead, and Ray learns that he can't fully believe what he remembers to be true.

You can tell where the film is going from the trailer, but also from your own knowledge of the issue.  You know who the bad guys are, you know how it'll turn out, and there's very little left to the imagination.  The film relies almost entirely on its use of violence and CGI, but since being neutered for a PG-13 rating, even those scenes are lacking depth or any real excitement.  Speaking of CGI, you'd be forgiven if you thought the film came out in the 2000s, because it's exceptionally bad especially coming off a huge budget. 

Vin Diesel is your typical go-to action star, but if he's not playing Dom Toretto or Riddick, you can tell his performance will be left in the recesses of your mind (remember "The Last Witch Hunter" or "Babylon, A.D.?"  I don't either), and "Bloodshot" will be added to his filler material films between his franchise favorites.  Even though the film relies heavily on his "family" concept you see in the "Fast and the Furious" films, it feels like a cheap carbon copy (as does every other film this movie blatantly rips off, like "Terminator," "Robocop," "Total Recall" and "Universal Soldier."  It didn't seem like anyone involved in the film even wanted to participate, as each one sleepwalked through their performances and no one really seemed to care about the outcome.

This is probably because each character was plucked from every action movie imaginable.  Eiza Gonzalez's KT is your typical love interest who works for the bad guys but really wants to be good.  Guy Pearce plays his typical Guy Pearce-type villain role and is only missing a handlebar mustache to complete the cliche.  "Outlander" star Sam Heughan stars as Ray's antithesis Jimmy Dalton, who immediately hates Ray from the start and relishes in trying to kill him because...reasons?  Then there's Lamorne Morris, who plays your typical "guy in the chair" sidekick who's highly knowledgeable about coding and computers, and provides almost beathless one-liners that become tiring and grating after the first syllable.

The action, as mentioned earlier, is supposed to be balls to the wall and intense, but instead becomes tiresome and boring.  You'd expect a scene where Vin Diesel is battling hordes of unnamed bad guys in a darkened tunnel to be exciting, but it's almost laughable how bad it is.  Then there's an elevator fight reminiscent of "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" and "Hobbs & Shaw," but both those films did it way better, as here it's just an excuse to show off the CGI (poorly, I might add) and provide some sort of buzz, but the only buzz you hear is your own snoring.

In wanting to create another comic book cinematic universe, "Bloodshot" missed the mark on every level, and hopefully this will be a one-and-done that'll be quickly forgotten even before the credits begin rolling.

The Score: D-