Overall verdict: 6.5/10
The Good: Intense action, cool chase scenes, easy to follow story, good looking characters
The Bad: generic music, inconsistent special effects, shallow narrative, tons of wasted potential, underdeveloped characters
***********Review***********
A professional soldier, killed in action, and brought back to life as a technologically augmented one man army. He soon rebels against his creators and seeks to rediscover his humanity while being hunted down by similarly augmented antagonists. Sounds familiar? That’s UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, and BLOODSHOT is exactly that kind of throwback to the early 90s era of sci fi blockbusters where the protagonist is cast more for his muscles than his acting, where scientists have hidden agendas, some megacorp is involved and there is always this geeky techie type comic relief.
BLOODSHOT is not the most original of movies, but it has its charm. The action is spectacular for a film of its budget. Standouts include a stylish shootout in a tunnel flooded by flour and lit by red flares, a wild street chase through London suburbs, and a crazy three way melee on the side of a skyscraper. The premise is an intriguing one with tons of potential but it is all wasted thanks to the very generic execution.
So Vin Diesel plays Ray Garrison, our titular enhanced dead soldier, just like every other Vin Diesel character in all his gravely baritone, muscular body toned glory. Not much in the way of acting there if you are just playing the same character type just with a different profession. After being bought back to life by a seemingly benevolent inventor Doctor Emil Harding of the Rising Spirit Tech company, Ray meets fellow cyber augmented soldiers, starts to remember his death and murder of his wife at the hands of a villain, then breaks out of RST to track down said villain and use his nanotechnology enhanced abilities to exact his revenge.
But things are not all as they seem and this is not a spoiler since the false memories and Ray being unwittingly manipulated into carrying out assassinations by perceiving them as revenge were all blatantly advertised in the movie’s trailer. While the build up to the big twist is done relatively well, it ultimately feels over simplified and boils down to a series of decisions by a supporting character that comes out of nowhere. From then on, it is one generic cliche after another. Clear good and bad guys, no shades of grey, just a simple almost Saturday Morning Cartoon-like approach to the overall narrative.
Generic too is the music accompanying the action. Just search up “action packed trailer music” online. The result is exactly what Composer Steve Jablonsky’s tunes for this movie sound like. To his credit, it at least sounds different from his scores on Transformers which nearly all of his post-2007 action movie works sound like.
Although I praise the action, the special effects either lack consistency or look rehashed from other movies. The exosuit augmentations worn by the RST experiments? They look like similar exo suits from EDGE OF TOMORROW. The nanomachines enabling Ray to instantaneously heal any injury? It’s the same dark grey particle effects seen in TERMINATOR GENISYS for the T3000. There are scenes where digital doubles are used for more dangerous stunts and these are plain obvious in the unnatural way they move and the city skyline shots showing the CGI RST building does not look good.
A better creative team could have elevated this movie into something special. Maybe play a little more to it’s throwback nature by embracing the excesses or early 90s sci fi. Or perhaps not oversimplifying a narrative with great potential. What if Bloodshot truly cannot tell the difference between what was real and what was implanted memory? What if the whole ordeal with RST was a complex gambit upon a gambit scheme by the comic relief techie guy to take down Doctor Harding? Keeping such things open to interpretation, having a more clever script that is not dumbed down, could have elevated BLOODSHOT to the level of classics like TOTAL RECALL. It’s attempts at any deeper themes like exploring what drives Ray to keep fighting, or the hints that there may be a darker side to Ray’s past and his purpose for becoming a soldier in the first place, they are all merely mentioned and nothing is done with them. Not developed, not subverted, just mentioned.
One of the big draws of the classic sci Fi movies is the talking points they raise surrounding the themes and concepts in those movies. Fans keep talking and discussing and dissecting, leading to the movie being remembered long after its release. BLOODSHOT is neither here nor there. Too shallow to achieve long term cult status, too derivative but without that self awareness to pass off as a homage, and to my understanding it deviates a lot from the original comic source material to even pass off as a straight adaptation. It is a simple Vin Diesel action movie with superficial thrills, great action, good looking stars and little else beyond that.
***********Review***********
A professional soldier, killed in action, and brought back to life as a technologically augmented one man army. He soon rebels against his creators and seeks to rediscover his humanity while being hunted down by similarly augmented antagonists. Sounds familiar? That’s UNIVERSAL SOLDIER, and BLOODSHOT is exactly that kind of throwback to the early 90s era of sci fi blockbusters where the protagonist is cast more for his muscles than his acting, where scientists have hidden agendas, some megacorp is involved and there is always this geeky techie type comic relief.
BLOODSHOT is not the most original of movies, but it has its charm. The action is spectacular for a film of its budget. Standouts include a stylish shootout in a tunnel flooded by flour and lit by red flares, a wild street chase through London suburbs, and a crazy three way melee on the side of a skyscraper. The premise is an intriguing one with tons of potential but it is all wasted thanks to the very generic execution.
So Vin Diesel plays Ray Garrison, our titular enhanced dead soldier, just like every other Vin Diesel character in all his gravely baritone, muscular body toned glory. Not much in the way of acting there if you are just playing the same character type just with a different profession. After being bought back to life by a seemingly benevolent inventor Doctor Emil Harding of the Rising Spirit Tech company, Ray meets fellow cyber augmented soldiers, starts to remember his death and murder of his wife at the hands of a villain, then breaks out of RST to track down said villain and use his nanotechnology enhanced abilities to exact his revenge.
But things are not all as they seem and this is not a spoiler since the false memories and Ray being unwittingly manipulated into carrying out assassinations by perceiving them as revenge were all blatantly advertised in the movie’s trailer. While the build up to the big twist is done relatively well, it ultimately feels over simplified and boils down to a series of decisions by a supporting character that comes out of nowhere. From then on, it is one generic cliche after another. Clear good and bad guys, no shades of grey, just a simple almost Saturday Morning Cartoon-like approach to the overall narrative.
Generic too is the music accompanying the action. Just search up “action packed trailer music” online. The result is exactly what Composer Steve Jablonsky’s tunes for this movie sound like. To his credit, it at least sounds different from his scores on Transformers which nearly all of his post-2007 action movie works sound like.
Although I praise the action, the special effects either lack consistency or look rehashed from other movies. The exosuit augmentations worn by the RST experiments? They look like similar exo suits from EDGE OF TOMORROW. The nanomachines enabling Ray to instantaneously heal any injury? It’s the same dark grey particle effects seen in TERMINATOR GENISYS for the T3000. There are scenes where digital doubles are used for more dangerous stunts and these are plain obvious in the unnatural way they move and the city skyline shots showing the CGI RST building does not look good.
A better creative team could have elevated this movie into something special. Maybe play a little more to it’s throwback nature by embracing the excesses or early 90s sci fi. Or perhaps not oversimplifying a narrative with great potential. What if Bloodshot truly cannot tell the difference between what was real and what was implanted memory? What if the whole ordeal with RST was a complex gambit upon a gambit scheme by the comic relief techie guy to take down Doctor Harding? Keeping such things open to interpretation, having a more clever script that is not dumbed down, could have elevated BLOODSHOT to the level of classics like TOTAL RECALL. It’s attempts at any deeper themes like exploring what drives Ray to keep fighting, or the hints that there may be a darker side to Ray’s past and his purpose for becoming a soldier in the first place, they are all merely mentioned and nothing is done with them. Not developed, not subverted, just mentioned.
One of the big draws of the classic sci Fi movies is the talking points they raise surrounding the themes and concepts in those movies. Fans keep talking and discussing and dissecting, leading to the movie being remembered long after its release. BLOODSHOT is neither here nor there. Too shallow to achieve long term cult status, too derivative but without that self awareness to pass off as a homage, and to my understanding it deviates a lot from the original comic source material to even pass off as a straight adaptation. It is a simple Vin Diesel action movie with superficial thrills, great action, good looking stars and little else beyond that.
***********Review***********
Entertainment: A-
Story: C-
Acting: C+
Acting: C+
Characters: B
Music: D
Replay value: B-
"Brains": C-
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