Bloodshot

<<

Now Playing

>>

I must admit that I tend to go against the grain pretty heavily on Vin Deisel movies. To most critics, his movies are just mindless, pointless action that they try so hard to find some kind of meaning in, as if they should be something deeper than they are. In my opinion, however, he's basically our new Schwarzenegger. His movies are the movies to watch with a big bucket of popcorn, when you just wanna toss your mind out the window and have some fun for a couple of hours. And there's nothing wrong with that! This one is no exception to that analogy, so I implore people not to read too deeply into things here, either.
​
​Based on the Valiant Comics of the same name, 'Bloodshot' revolves around Ray Garrison (Diesel), and elite marine soldier who finds himself captured, only to be murdered, along with his wife, Gina (Talulah Riley). Ray is brought back to life by a covert team of scientists, helming an institution called Rising Spirit Tech. They instill in him the uncanny ability to rapidly heal, using nanotechnology. The only catch is that he can't remember anything, aside from very faint and indistinguishable flashes.

Here, he discovers that he's not alone, as he meets several other enhanced individuals. His lead doctor, Emil Harting (Guy Pierce) has a cybernetic arm; the primary that he gets along with, KT (Eiza González) has a special respirator, making her immune to inhalents; Tibbs (Alex Hernandez), an expert marksman who went blind has been fitted with special technology that allows him to see everything; and Jimmy Dalton (Sam Heughan), who claims to be a member of SEAL Team Six (who took out Bin Laden) who has been fitted with cybernetic legs.

While training, and discovering his new abilities, Garrison eventually chooses to go after who he believes to be his wife's killer, once he manages to remember the final scenes of his former life. But the viewer learns very quickly that there's much more to him, and what these scientists want him for, than meets the eye. The big question through the whole thing is basically "can he ever get it right"? If you watch it, you'll get what I mean by that, but until then I'm choosing to remain a bit cryptic, being that there's quite a few twists and turns that the whole thing takes.

My only real criticisms are that the general ideas behind this one aren't entirely original, and though things looked and felt cool enough, nothing really popped out enough to wow me. In my humble opinion, there's a much better version of this that came out a couple of years ago called 'Upgrade' - a film I often claim to be "the better 'Venom' movie". It has to do with a lot of the same subject matter, and it's a hell of a lot more intense and fun than this. That said, I still can't quite claim this as being "bad" so much as "fun, and perfectly passable".

Aside from other film critics, digging into this one a bit, another big set of critics seem to be fans of the original comics. So I will say that if you have read it through, and you get a lot from it, you may very well be disappointed, as that seems to be the case for the most part. That said, if you're like me, and completely unfamiliar, it's as I said before - a fun action movie with cool effects and not to be read into too deeply.

3/5

---