After soldier Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) and his wife are killed by his enemies, Garrison's body has been given to the corporation RTS which has developed a new technology that brings him back to life.
When his memory returns, Garrison escapes to seek vengeance on the man who killed his wife. Little does he know that his entire motivation has been engineered by RTS to silence anyone who knows what they are really up to.
Will Garrison find out what is going on?
Griffin Newman on the High & Mighty podcast hit it on the head - he said the key to Vin is how aggressively, unabashedly, EMBARRASSINGLY earnest he is onscreen.
With Fast 9 pushed to next year, we will have to wait to see if the Fast crew can survive sans Rock. Even if Han was not back, I have a hunch it would still be better than Messers Hobbs & Shaw.
In the meantime, Diesel has a new solo vehicle out now, one where he is the star and minus an familial ensemble.
I have never read the comic book on which this picture is based. I did not even know it existed before it was announced, and I caught the trailer in front of some other movie. It looked silly, cartoonish and absolutely juiced with that patent Diesel gravitas.
But what about the movie itself?
The first thought I had about the movie was how it tied into this chapter of Diesel's career. Whereas his career pre-2009 was pretty eclectic, after a series of bombs and his return to the Fast and Furious, Diesel has become far more conservative in his choice of projects - he has largely avoided star vehicles and has begun a process of converting his other franchise properties into vague approximations of the F&F 'family' dynamic.
Aside from The Last Witch Hunter, Diesel’s most popular releases have been ensemble pictures. xXx 3: Return of Xander Cage converted the concept from one daredevil-turned secret agent to a team, and 2013's Riddick positioned the title character as one of an ensemble of badasses (we shall put aside Guardians of the Galaxy since Diesel does not creatively oversee that property, but even there he is a member of a family unit).
It could be the case that Diesel has recognised that his most popular films - Fast and Furious, Pitch Black and Guardians of the Galaxy - are ensemble-based, and he pops harder when juxtaposed with other characters.
Whatever the reasons, Bloodshot fits comfortably as the latest chapter in Diesel’s thematic franchise of family-centric action pictures.
While the movie is based around Ray Garrison, the movie is ultimately about a group of outsiders coming together to help Garrison escape. Whereas the villain uses his technology to keep people as indentured slaves, Garrison is able to inspire a mini-revolt and the film ends with Garrison and the survivors forming a unit and riding off into the sunset in a literal camper van. It cannot get more 'family' than that.
This star stuff aside, the best part of the movie is Diesel. He has a feel for melodrama and with a character like Garrison, he is home free. I am not even saying that he is hammy - he plays the stakes of the initial set-up, and then when he learns that he has been manipulated, he plays that sense of betrayal well.
There is a short scene where Diesel meets his wife, the person he has believed dead for so long, and he really sells the sense of confusion and pain that the character is feeling. He has gone from the tragedy of believing his wife was dead, to learning that she has had an entire life that he has missed - he cannot even remember that they broke up.
And now to the rest of the movie.
In terms of direction Bloodshot is a mess. The editing is chaotic; shot compositions are noticeably poor (there are multiple shots where characters are crammed into the corner of the frame or characters’ heads are awkwardly scraping the top of the frame); basic geography within scenes is frustrated by shots and editing that do not build in the way that the script intends.
The most interesting set-piece is Diesel’s assault on a target in a tunnel. Lit only by red flares, with flour covering everything like snow, it is a fun environment that looks like garbage because the shot choices and editing totally short-change it. It does not say much when the movie trailer showcases this sequence better than the movie.
As far as the other cast go, they are mostly fine - it is just a bummer that the script gives them nothing to work with. Eiza Gonzalez is solid as the one member of RTS who comes around to Garrison's side - one thing I really liked was that the movie does not pitch their relationship toward romance. Their dynamic is closer to combat buddies.
One surprising miss is Lamorne Morris, as the tech guy who helps Garrison. Morris has been great in other things, but here he is saddled to a stock character and a couple of character choices which feel wedged in. While the movie could use some levity, the character feels inappropriately comedic in a way that does not really fit with the tenor of the scenes he is in.
While the story has promise, Bloodshot is a frustratingly sloppy movie that is purely of interest as a piece of the Diesel filmography. I have totally come around on Diesel, and I look forward to whatever he does next, but that does not take away from the sad fact that Bloodshot is not good.
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