Bloodshot: Film Review

Bloodshot: Film Review

Cast: Vin Diesel, Guy Pearce, Eiza Gonzalez, Sam Heughan, Lamorne Norris
Director: David Whilson

With Vin Diesel packing his usual charisma, Bloodshot's super-soldier manipulation story is more about freeze-frame action and slow mo than superhero sense and sensibilities.

Diesel is hotshot soldier Ray Garrison, whose life is changed when he's captured and his wife killed in front of him. Left for dead, Garrison wakes up in an Avengers-style building and hi-tech facility where Pearce's Dr Emil Harting says they've rebuilt him with nanites.

However, when Garrison has flashbacks, he sets out on a revenge mission.

It'd be good to report that Bloodshot lives up to the premise and promise of the smartly edited trailer.

But disappointingly, Bloodshot falls into the category of anaemic formulaic sci-fi thriller that you've seen way back when Universal Soldier first arrived on the scene.

Whilson has a formative background in VFX and it shows in his limited direction.

Everything is geared towards either a cool tech scene (the early reveal of the nanites is deftly executed) or to moody murky action sequences where Diesel's Terminator style stalker comes out of the dark and kills.

It's blandly familiar, and disappointingly dull - a film that sets up its premise well before falling into deja vu territory and cliched tropes to get it over the finish line. A final battle sequence feels like a redo of Spider-man versus Doc Ock, and the CGI creaks a little in the frenetic scenes.

Quick cut edits mar fights, and some action sequences are soaked in blood-red flares, simply because it looks cool once and Whilson decides to overuse.

While Diesel appears on auto-pilot, and Morris' Cockney hacker has jokes which fall flat, Gonzalez brings a humanity to proceedings that's desperately needed, and enlivens scenes with Diesel, lifting him out of the simply here to get a paycheck that gifts his performance with ennui.

Ultimately, Bloodshot needs a transfusion of sorts - it had the promise to launch a franchise, but now it's simply left exposed on the celluloid floor, bleeding out.