The Sunday Mail
Tinashe Kusema
Film review
REVENGE movies are a dime a dozen in today’s Hollywood such that I can effortlessly name as many as 20 in my sleep.
When done right, this clichéd genre can be quite entertaining.
After all, John Wick is on every movie buff’s top-10 releases of the last decade, and this is a movie about a guy whose dog gets shot and he goes on a killing spree.
“Gladiator” (2000), “Men of Fire” (2004), “Law Abiding Citizen” (2009), “The Count of Monte Cristo (2002), “Taken” (2008), “Payback” (1999) and the Kill Bill double bill (2003-4) are arguably some of the best releases of the aforesaid genre.
The only movie you will not find on this list is Vin Diesel’s flop and failed franchise “Bloodshot”.
I will explore some of the reasons in this review.
Let us start with the huge elephant in the room.
The biggest difference between the movies I stated earlier and “Bloodshot” is that they all have a good actor steering the plot.
Vin Diesel is arguably one of the blandest actors in Hollywood.
I mean when the dude is not screaming or stammering through his lines in the Fast franchise, or Riddick Chronicles, he brings virtually no substance to his roles.
If it were not for the efforts of the late Paul Walker, and some of his co-stars, I doubt that we would all be eagerly awaiting the new instalment of the vehicular monster movie franchise — Fast 9.
When revenge is the driving force of your movie, you need someone who can actually sell grief, loss or express emotion.
Put simply, the character should actually act.
Diesel is not that person.
The fact that I compared him to the likes of Denzel Washington, Liam Neeson, Gerard Butler and even Uma Thurman does not give him any credence.
“Bloodshot” tells the story of Ray Garrison, a former marine who gets killed on duty and is resurrected by a multimillion-dollar company and is turned into a killing machine. After leading a successful rescue operation in Mombasa, Kenya, Garrison and his wife Gina travel for a holiday in Italy.
They get kidnapped by a group of mercenaries led by a man called Martin Axe.
Axe, portrayed by Max Kebell, demands to know details of their recent mission.
He kills Garrison and his wife when he fails to get what he wants.
The guy’s film selection is all over the place. He brings nothing to said flicks.
It is made worse by the fact that he has also lost that nostalgia feel.
The supporting cast are as generic as they come, the film leans too hard to slow motion and terrible Computer Generated Images (CGI). Oh! Did I mention that “Bloodshot” was one of the last films released before the coronavirus (Covid-19) became a pandemic and a global threat? This, nonetheless, takes anything away from the film.
