Directed by: Dave Wilson
Starring: Vin Diesel, Eiza Gonzalez, Guy Pearce, Toby Kebbell, Sam Heughan, Lamorne Morris
I like Vin Diesel. I've expressed this sentiment in previous reviews of his movies. Bloodshot, however, is not a movie which should be included in any career retrospectives. It is a hybrid of The Terminator, Memento, and with a dash of The Fast and the Furious series. The trouble is: Bloodshot isn't as good as any of its influences. It is lifeless and dreary, with action sequences edited so bizarrely that you can't make sense of them. Say what you will about the physical impracticality of the stunts in the Fast and Furious series, at least you know what's going on.
Bloodshot opens with soldier Ray Garrison (Diesel) completing a mission of knocking off some terrorists in an unnamed county. He returns home to his wife Gina (Riley), but their marital bliss is interrupted by thugs who kidnap Gina and take Ray hostage as revenge for Ray's killing of their brethren. Gina is soon killed by a dancing creep (who dances to Talking Heads' Psycho Killer) and then Ray is executed as well, but no Ray is not dead. He wakes up in a lab run by billionaire Dr. Emil Harting (Pearce), who informs Ray he has been reanimated in order to continue his chosen profession as a soldier. Ray's memory is supposedly wiped out, but he is haunted by visions of his wife's murder, and after piecing together what happened, he ditches the lab to seek vengeance. He offs the dancing creep and his henchmen in a tunnel so dark it is nearly impossible to see who is shooting whom. Or what is being blown up. It drags on, and there is still half a movie to go.
But that's not all...because Ray soon starts having visions all over again of his wife's murder, but this time the dancing killer is a different man. The seemingly affable Dr. Harting is actually hatching a dastardly plot using Ray as his hitman. Harting implants the visions while changing the characters, so Ray can kill off Harting's enemies while believing he is seeking revenge for Gina's murder. Brilliant! And then Harting can weaponize Ray and others like him as a private army to the highest bidder. Ray is nearly indestructible, because his body can repair itself quickly after being wounded (a la the T-1000 in Terminator 2: Judgment Day) and the only thing which can hurt him is when his battery runs low and he needs to recharge.
Where to begin? If you consider the overhead costs of Harting's lab, employees, and the technology needed to create Ray and others with different powers, Harting's highest possible bidder would have to be Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. No one else could afford Ray or pay enough to allow Harting to turn any sort of a profit. And if Harting has the funds to create a Ray prototype in the first place, wouldn't the creation of such a soldier eventually become a law of diminishing returns?
No matter. Ray eventually figures out his situation and with the help of Harting's conscience-stricken right hand KT (Gonzalez), who can stay underwater indefinitely due to improvements in her lung function, Ray soon makes it his mission to eradicate Harding and his flunkies. By then, we've been subjected to endless fight sequences which appear to have been edited while blindfolded, and Diesel occasionally rousing himself enough to care about the turkey he is appearing in. Diesel was paid handsomely to give a hoot, and even that is tough for him. What is our motivation?
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