Bloodshot opens like you expect any non Fast and Furious Vin Diesel vehicle to open: with our protagonist Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) striding into a firefight to rescue a hostage. It soon shifts to Garrison meeting with his wife and spending some quality time with her, before both of them get snatched and his wife gets killed in front of him by an almost self-aware cliché villain (Toby Kebbell). When Garrison gets resurrected as part of a top secret project headed by Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce) and endowed with superpowers, he embarks on a revenge mission as soon as he recovers his fragmented memories. Of course, if you have read the comic books the movie was inspired from, you know there’s more to this story than meets the eye.
One of the best things about the film is Garrison’s superpowers. His body has been pumped full of nanites that are constantly rebuilding his body, rendering him functionally immortal. Garrison suffers a litany of abuse: from hundreds of gunshots and getting run over by a truck to dropping several hundred stories and surviving grenade explosions. And he comes back nearly unscathed everytime. Unfortunately, Garrison doesn’t really encounter opponents that truly challenge him. There’s an enhanced amputee with two pairs of arms that provides some difficulty for a couple of minutes, but most of the people he faces are your normal garden variety goons.
Despite the twist (which is often referred to during the film’s ads), Bloodshot falls too easily into the motions of a predictably safe action film.
Director David S.F. Wilson ignores character development and backstory in lieu of jumping straight into the action. There’s a sliver of character suggested in the case of KT (Elza González) who tries to cling on to some semblance of morality despite her surroundings, and then there’s the sidekick-like character, Wilfred Wiggans (Lamorne Morris), who exists mostly to provide technical support to Garrison. But the focus is squarely on the action.
The action scenes have plenty of body counts and healthy helpfuls of gunfire, but the PG-13 rating means there is little blood, if at all. There is a kinetic elevator fight scene near the end that lacks a sense of direction. But most of these efforts are undone by the film’s editing, which employs blurry, frantic quick cuts, often making the action seem disjointed. The film tries to be self-aware about its use of typical action tropes such as using the song Psycho Killer as an intro for a villain, but being self-aware doesn’t absolve the film from its unoriginality.
Diesel, for his part, approaches his role with the usual enthusiasm, remaining stoic through most of his action scenes, leaving Wiggans to make the quips. Pearce’s Harting also fails to impress as a villain, showing too much empathy at the beginning and not enough malice near the end. Like other enemies in the film, he’s just another obstacle for Garrison to overcome.
With the release of other tentpole films being pushed due to the ongoing coronavirus crisis, Bloodshot is probably the last piece of superhero action you are going to get for a while.
It’s a passable flick, but maybe hold off on buying it on home video and wait for it to come to streaming. It’s not a memorable flick, but at least it’s not as tired as last year’s The Gemini Man. It has plenty of entertainment value, which can be a godsend under current circumstances.
