Marine Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) unabashedly participates in the rescue of a hostage in Kenya. He literally tears off a grenade from his heart, throws it at enemies, and then, in an ominous confrontation with a terrorist, calmly puts a bullet in his forehead, after which he just as calmly flies to an American military base in Italy, where right next to the runway of the military airfield of his secret base waiting is Jean’s beloved wife (Talulah Riley), who loves Ray’s scars that streak his mighty body, but does not like his dangerous business trips, from where he always returns, as promised.
However, Ray does not have long to have mercy on his wife. They were kidnapped by villains led by a clear psychopath Martin Eggs (Toby Kebbell), and among the cow carcasses, Egs, dancing, demands from Ray to give out a military secret that they forgot to tell Ray. After that, Martin shoots Gina – NO-E-E-E-E-ET! – and Ray – boom, darkness.
Ray woke up in the building of a high-tech company RST, led by Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce). Harting happily informs Ray that his native army handed over the dead man to the laboratory for experiments, and the experiments were so successful that solid nanites are now walking in Ray’s blood, which are able to immediately heal a small wound, and reassemble Ray’s completely blown head. True, they showed how they heal a small wound, but they didn’t show how they collect the head, but we take the nanites’ word for it.
In addition to Ray, in the skyscraper of a high-tech company is Harting’s assistant KT (Eisa Gonzalez), who has an artificial breathing apparatus, an unfriendly-looking soldier Jimmy Dalton (Sam Heughan) with artificial legs, and a sad-looking fighter Wilfred (Alex Hernandez), who has artificial eyes and an artificial penis . Or a shuttle. In general, something like that was also replaced for him.
Ray doesn’t remember anything at first, so he joyfully entertains himself by punching hefty concrete pillars with his hand, and then he starts pumping dumbbells with the same hand – apparently to punch even heftier concrete pillars, but then KT invited him to drink a little, and alcohol in Ray brought back unpleasant memories. So he immediately bowed out and drove to Budapest to kill Martin Eggs.
***
To be honest, I stumbled upon this movie by accident. I saw that a new action movie with Diesel and a rather big budget was released, so I decided to look at the exercise bike. After all, on an exercise bike it’s not shameful, there you can also see something else without risking my impeccable reputation.
The first forty-five minutes of the action movie was SO dumb, even for a Diesel movie, that it felt like the director had simply taken a B-movie from the mid-eighties and carefully re-shot it in 2020 with modern special effects.
It was all so monstrous that I even decided to look further, because well, you can’t release this for 45 million. After the scene where the absolutely indestructible Diesel cracks down on a well-armed detachment transporting Martin Eggs, I became terribly interested in what the scriptwriters, of whom there are two here and they are all living people, will do next: perhaps you can even look them in the eye.
Because the indestructibility of indestructibility is different. Look, for example, John Wick – too, bitch, unkillable. But he is indestructible not so that his head is smashed into shreds, and then she quickly gathered again, and with the same physiognomy, terribly reminiscent of some large vegetable like a pumpkin. Firstly, John Wick can be beaten and he will even pretend to be in pain. Secondly, in every movie, John Wick is sure to sew up a knife cut. Thirdly, John Wick simply does not get hit by bullets. Because he is very smart.
And Ray, excuse me, Harrison – yes, he doesn’t care about the lantern at all. Even if he jets a bazooka straight into the drawbar, he doesn’t give a damn. He, you know, blood, Shot! But this, excuse me, the audience is offended. Because what is the interest in something like this to look further, if he went where he wants, killed anyone, and nothing can be done with him? This is not how superheroes are made, the audience believes, and the cat Bagel and I will subscribe to every word here.
However, just around the fiftieth minute, it becomes clear that all this terribly false stamping was not just like that. From this moment on, the picture begins to pretend to be much smarter than it actually is, but I hasten to please you: it is still a complete scenario madhouse, just a slightly different level than in the first forty-five minutes.
Let’s pause here for a minute. Because after watching the film and in the process of studying the material of the history of creation, I found out with incredible surprise that this is not at all some kind of separate action movie with Diesel. It’s a new franchise of a new superhero!
Yes, yes, Bloodshot is a comic book character from the small publishing house Valiant. It was invented back in the nineties, but then Bloodshot was just an invulnerable hero, a living weapon used by evil people. In 2012, the comics got a new writer, who nevertheless endowed Bloodshot with a fairly clear motivation and a whole set of weaknesses, as a result of which he ceased to look like just a mechanism for killing.
At some point, this character became interested in Sony: they had long been going to launch a new franchise. Together with Valiant Entertainment and Columbia Pictures, they signed a deal for as many as five films. The first two films were supposed to be about Bloodshot, the second two were about another Valiant hero, Harbinger, and the last movie was supposed to bring Bloodshot and Harbinger together at the same traditional superhero party.
So, “Bloodshot” is like the first movie in the franchise! This complete madhouse is the beginning of a franchise, gentlemen, I’m in the same shock as you!
And now let’s get back to what is happening in the picture, after the audience was explained that everything is not what it seems, that everything is really cool and interesting there.
So, there is nothing cool and interesting there, not a damn thing. I will not spoil, although there is no point in watching this film, in my opinion, but even after revealing the full picture of what is happening (and they put an obvious spoiler in the trailer: apparently, they were afraid that the first forty-five minutes most of the audience would just not stand it) there continues an absolutely ridiculous scenario madhouse, which does not even try to pretend that it serves for something other than an incoherent bunch, I apologize for the beautiful pun, for some special effects that they decided to please us for some reason.
The choice of Vin Diesel for the role of Ray was frankly surprising. No, the reasons for the producers are more or less clear: this idiotic “Three X’s: World Domination”, oddly enough, made very good box office receipts (you see, the audience really liked Xander Cage’s sheep half-ass) and Sony decided that a very stupid action movie with a dull and a scary self-loving starring Diesel is just the thing. In addition, they thought there, Diesel, including dragging a super-successful franchise with “Fast and the Furious”, where he is a prominent character. Well, they said in the studio, now let him drag our franchise, and in the title role.
However, we know well that Diesel is an extremely mediocre actor. On the scale of “Sasha Kuritsyn … many, many all sorts of actors … Al Pacino” Diesel is such Sasha Kuritsyn, only a really pumped-up plus for the rich. But, alas, it’s not enough to carry yourself around the screen with a terribly smug look and bulge your muscles! In the movies, oddly enough, you need to act, which Diesel simply does not know about. (But, however, Diesel still has one convincing role, we admit it. He played a tree well in Guardians of the Galaxy.)
If the writers had come up with at least some interesting phrases for him, at least some kind of intelligible motivation, then the character could look a little better. And the scriptwriters clearly did not read the informative brochure “500 phrases that Vin Diesel’s characters should under no circumstances say,” so Ray here is incredibly dull and dreary just to the point of brutality.
With other characters, by the way, there are also obvious problems. For example, here’s Ray’s antagonist Jimmy. Why did he dislike Ray so much? No, it’s clear that at some point he was simply ordered to deal with Ray. But there it is clear that he has something personal. Jealous of KT? And just something? And I was pleased with Jimmy’s sweet habit of sticking chewed gum anywhere. The scriptwriters, you see, simply forgot to tell him that there are trash cans in this world.
And this second guy, I already forgot his name, what is he there for at all? Just Jimmy’s partner?
KT of all these with implanted superpowers is the most interesting and lively, but her character is also very, very stilted. Well, at least Eiza Gonzalez played her in such a way that, against the background of an almost dead Diesel, she was a relatively bright spot in the bloodshot dark kingdom.
Guy Pearce played the villainous boss quite worthy, but he was destined to play all sorts of reptiles, and Bublik and I respect him because he does not relax in these roles, but works very professionally.
Two superhackers are responsible for the barely pecking humorous component here. One, Eric, helps Harting and has a “want to get a big dick” humor. The other is the already really cool superhacker Wilfred (this is already about the seventy-fifth cool superhacker in the action movie), and Lamorne Morris is selflessly pulled off in his role, and he also portrays a cool British pronunciation. But for him, after all, they came up with funny phrases, it’s only a pity that in all this scenic anguish, Wilfred looks like an absolutely foreign body.
The special effects here are a little better than everything else. However, the first scene in the tunnel, when the unkillable Ray splintered a small detachment, getting to Egs, looked very sad, and I tuned in to the worst. However, later the audience was nevertheless pleased with a good chase and a spectacular battle between Ray and the Six-winged Seraphim, although the Seraphim, to be honest, had only four arms, but at least one could look at something there.
But after that, in the final, they revived Ray, who had been completely destroyed before that without any hope of recovery, and he was revived without any explanation, even in the style of “and it was his nanites that suddenly received energy from a supernova explosion in the toilet on Bright Future Street, house 1”, and our suspicion that they absolutely consider all viewers to be complete idiots grew into confidence. On the one hand, of course, they are right, which is shown by some rave reviews, but on the other hand, not all of them are idiots.
With the potential fees of this picture, everything is decidedly incomprehensible. Formally, he collected only $ 28 million around the world, but he began to be shown in the States on March 6, and on the first weekend he collected $ 9.3 million, which was the third highest figure at that time in the country, and after a while the cinemas were closed for a very long time. many countries. So we do not have proper information about how much he could collect, it is quite possible that there would be a good box office. At least when, due to the pandemic, Sony released the film on Amazon Prime and iTunes on March 24, less than three weeks after the theatrical release, the film became #1 on Amazon and #4 on iTunes.
So the franchise is still unclear. It is quite possible that it will be continued and we are waiting for more new adventures of a completely indestructible, but the same dull Ray. Amen. I’m going to refuel the nanites, they are already at a critical level of charge.
Bloodshot movie meaning
Director: Dave Willson Cast: Vin Diesel, Guy Pearce, Lamorne Morris, Eiza Gonzalez, Sam Heughan, Siddharth Dhananjay, Talula Riley, Toby Kebbell, Johannes Haykjur Johannesson, Alex Hernandez
Budget: $45 million, Global gross: $28 million
Action comic, USA-China, 2020, 109 min.