If all you want is vengeance, superhuman strength and dumb fun, then look no further.
“Bloodshot,” based on a Valiant Comics series of the same name, is a thrilling yet forgettable watch that follows the basic format of an action film.
The plot follows Ray Garrison, played by Vin Diesel, a U.S. Marine sent to do rigorous tasks such as saving hostages.
Eventually, Garrison is caught by a group of unknown mercenaries while on vacation with his wife Gina, played by Talulah Riley, and is assumed dead.
But in a turn of events, the film reveals that Garrison isn’t dead, but instead was brought back to life by Dr. Emil Harting, played by Guy Pearce, who’s the boss of a company called Rising Spirit Tech.
Rising Spirit Tech is a company that specializes in offering disabled U.S. military personnel cybernetic enhancements. These enhancements make the disabled soldiers more powerful than ever.
Garrison’s augmented body allows him to regenerate while taking damage, program himself to drive anything and track certain targets. And of course, he has superhuman strength.
This supersoldier concept that makes the movie interesting and engaging, leaving the audience wondering what would happen next.
Garrison had trouble recalling his memories from before the incident. After his bionic resurrection, he began to experience flashbacks.
Eventually, Garrison remembered what happened before he was assumed to be killed and went looking for revenge.
The scene where he bumped into the mercenaries the second time around was the best part of the film. The choreography and action were well implemented, and it was exciting to see Garrison take advantage of his superhuman abilities.
In the scene, Garrison rammed into a mercenary’s squad car near a tunnel. The cargo exploded and created a hazy atmosphere.
You get to see Garrison take on squads of armed forces like a badass, using hand-to-hand combat against them.
From there, Garrison stalks his prey as he takes them down step by step.
Eventually, the action started to ramp up as the mercenary squads started to panic.
It was exciting to see Garrison go into complete beast mode by just taking all of them head-on while the mercenaries had no answer.
There was some well-used slow motion in the film, reminiscent of fight scenes from the movie, “300.”
However, once the fight scenes ended, the movie fell flat.
Garrison then met his former ally Jimmy Dalton, played by Sam Heughan, who ended up talking negatively to Garrison, making the rest of the film extremely predictable.
Dalton is another supersoldier created by Rising Spirit Tech.
The viewers could easily tell what was going to happen throughout the film, and it simply made the plot uninteresting to follow.
In a movie like this, the action scenes have to make up for a lazy plot, and ‘Bloodshot’ does at times. But it never recovered its story quality after Garrison began taking advantage of his superpowers.
There was a scene where Garrison clashed with other hyper-enhanced beings, including Dalton, including Dalton.
The movie would have pierced it’s one dimensionality if it had offered up any explanation or the rivalry between Dalton and Garrison.
It was quite fun to see Garrison seek vengeance on the guy who trash-talked him in the first place, but it wasn’t as exciting as it should have been because of a lack of buildup and fight choreography.
Diesel’s performance as Garrison was passable, only because he did not need to step out of his comfort zone at all. Garrison isn’t a character with depth. He’s simply an angry dude seeking vengeance and violence to fulfill his needs.
The movie wasn’t bad, but it’s a good definition of a “weekend thriller.” It’s a fun movie to watch for its nearly two-hour run time, but then you’re back to reality dealing with the quarantine situation.
