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Movie Review: Bloodshot

Mike Tyrkus

The latest comic-book to be adapted as a film, Bloodshot, stars Vin Diesel as a recently murdered soldier named Ray Garrison who is resurrected and bestowed with super strength and healing abilities thanks to nanotechnology coursing through his veins. Now, of course, he’s hell bent on exacting revenge on those that not only caused his early demise, but robbed him of the love of his life. Or is he? Unfortunately, that is where the intrigue takes leave of Bloodshot leaving a slog of a movie to get through.

Somehow, the film’s one hour and forty-nine minute running time ends up feeling much longer than it is as the story drags on and on and never finds a rhythm of any kind. Halfway through the film, it begins to feel like all of its conflicts are starting to resolve and then it carries on for another fifty minutes creating meaningless tangential plots and unwarranted character conflicts that play out as tacked on and tedious filler.

Much of the film feels like a wanna-be re-envisioning of RoboCop (1987). In fact, the story arc develops in very much the same way as that seminal film—albeit with less of the over-the-top ultra-violence that defined Paul Verhoeven’s movie. Here, the hero (Diesel) is introduced in an early scene doing the things that make him a superior soldier (and the film’s protagonist of course). Then, he is unceremoniously dispatched only to find himself resuscitated with new powers (of sorts) and no memory of his former self and life. Or, so he and the “evil” company created him think, initially anyway. Slowly, Ray remembers bits of his past life, but then he must come to terms with whether what he believes is real or whether it’s all simply part of the construct that the “company” has fashioned for him to keep him towing the company line.

Vin Diesel in “Bloodshot.” © 2019 CTMG, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Diesel brings his usual persona to the titular role, but that’s about it. There’s little to the character of Ray Garrison that hasn’t been seen in numerous other “wronged” good-guy movies and, at times, Bloodshot almost seems proud of that. Eliza González, as Garrison’s compatriot and fellow lab rat Katie, is the best of the supporting characters at work here, but even she can’t save the proceedings from the meandering road that Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserner’s screenplay takes to get the story from point A to point B.

Former visual effect specialist turned director, Dave Wilson, doesn’t offer anything very fresh throughout his directorial debut other than giving older tropes of the genre a slick new look. But, without a reason to exist, there’s ultimately no point.

Ultimately, Bloodshot is just another comic book adaptation upon (or possibly buried under) a mountain of better comic book adaptations that commits the terrible sin of offering the viewer no one to root for amidst the stylish, yet vacant proceedings of its tale.

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Mike Tyrkus

Editor in Chief at CinemaNerdz.com
An independent filmmaker, co-writer and director of over a dozen short films, the Editor in Chief of CinemaNerdz.com has spent much of the last three decades as a writer and editor specializing in biographical and critical reference sources in literature and the cinema, beginning in February 1991 reviewing films for his college newspaper. He was a member of the Detroit Film Critics Society, as well as the group's webmaster and one-time President for over a decade until the group ceased to exist. His contributions to film criticism can be found in Magill's Cinema Annual, VideoHound's Golden Movie Retriever (of which he was the editor for nearly a decade until it too ceased to exist), the International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, and the St. James Film Directors Encyclopedia (on which he collaborated with editor Andrew Sarris). He has also appeared on the television program Critic LEE Speaking alongside Lee Thomas of FOX2 and Adam Graham, of The Detroit News. He currently lives in the Detroit area with his wife and their dogs.

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