Mark Reviews Movies: BLOODSHOT

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 12, 2020

In terms of making him a unique and compelling character, the hero of Bloodshot has several things working against him. He's introduced as a soldier who makes up his own orders and goes in guns a-blazing, and that's about the end of his personality. His entire back story, though, is a lie, as it turns out, and in the movie's biggest reversal of what seems to be a straightforward revenge tale, we discover that the only events that define him as a character are manufactured memories.

On one hand, it matters, because the only information we receive about Ray Garrison (Vin Diesel) turns out to be phony, so in a way, we learn absolutely nothing about him. On the other hand, we learn everything we need to know about him: He's a soldier who makes up his own rules and goes into danger gun a-blazing. There isn't really a character here—just a broad persona and physical body, upon which some kind of superpower can be transplanted.

Yes, this is yet another superhero origin story, based upon the comic book series created by Kevin VanHook, Bob Layton, and Don Perlin. The weird part of it is that Ray is such a blank slate, in terms of his history and his personality, that the story of this movie ends with the possibility that he might actually develop a history and a personality if they end up making a sequel or two. This isn't the origin of a superhero. It's the origin of the potential for one.

As for those powers, they end up being the last straw for the character. He's basically invincible, and since the entire plot has him getting into physical confrontations with people who destroyed his life (both the fake one and the real one we never really learn about), the stakes here are non-existent. A good number of superheroes more or less are or can be seen as invincible. The clever comic writers and filmmakers know that the conflict for such characters must come from something other than a constant stream of fights. Screenwriters Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer don't seem to comprehend that. They're too enamored with the character's powers to make the story about anything other than them.

The story begins with a trio of introductory scenes, showing Ray rescuing a hostage from a city in Kenya, living an idyllic life with his wife Gina (Talulah Riley), and watching as she's murdered in front of him by a psycho killer named Axe (Toby Kebbell), before the killer shoots Ray. He awakens on a slab in a laboratory with no memory. Dr. Emil Harting (Guy Pearce) tells him the bad news and the good news: He did die, but the scientist resurrected him.

The better news is that Ray's blood is now a concoction of microscopic machines that can repair damaged tissue. In practical terms, this means that any cuts, gunshot wounds, or even traumatic injuries from explosions are but a minor inconvenience to Ray. Director David S.F. Wilson (making his debut) uses a lot of slow motion to ensure that we see Ray's healing powers during the fights and shootouts. The visual effects are occasionally grisly (Ray's jaw is almost destroyed by a bullet, and the flesh and bone hang by the connective threads of those miniscule robots as they repair the damage), but they really just hit home the point that we have no reason to care about or fear for this character.

The plot begins with Ray receiving a rush of memories and deciding that he's going to use his new superhuman healing and strength to kill Axe. He does, in the first of multiple fights that are mostly chaos (The camera is always moving—and often past the action as it happens) in search of style and coherency, and that seems to be the end of the story. Then, the scientist and his other cybernetic-powered henchmen (A pair of devoted heavies and K.T., played by Eiza González, who starts to question her boss' actions) turn on Ray, shut down his body, and implant new memories into his mind, including a different man murdering his wife. Harting is using Ray to kill anyone who has abandoned the project.

There are some half-considered flashes of ingenuity here, such as the way that Ray's clichéd back story is just the invention of an unimaginative coder (an inside joke on the part of the filmmakers, although they don't realize just how self-fulfilling it actually is) and how Ray intentionally devastates his own body to take down enemies (holding a mercenary, armed with a live grenade, against a bulletproof window). As for any notions about the cycle of violence and revenge in which Ray is trapped, they're all about getting to more action, first against his new target and later against his technology-enhanced comrades-turned-foes.

Bloodshot begins as and never moves past a one-idea story, and the idea is that Ray's powers are pretty neat. As for the character's potential as, you know, an actual character, the point is clear: Stay tuned.

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