Review of Bullet to the Head (2012) by Harry W — 24 Aug 2013

Combining the star of the Rambo films with the director of The Warriors is a perfectly badass idea on the surface which made Bullet to the Head so appealing on the surface, and bringing them in with modern day action stars Sung Kang and Jason Momoa is just the icing on the cake. Of course, you can't set your expectations too high as it is a modern day Sylvester Stallone action thriller, and not a big scale one like The Expendables.

The appeal of the script is hit and miss, and this is clear in the first scene where Jimmy Bobo goes into the hotel room with his partner and they encounter a man spewing poorly written gibberish. This is an example of some of the poor and repetitive dialogue the film has the viewer set up for, and its followed by some decent short dialogue giving a half-decent one liner to Sylvester Stallone.

The script doesn't cover as much as it could, but some of its focuses are good in terms of how it describes Jimmy Bobo's morals and techniques for his line of work. Essentially, it isn't exactly average, but its hit and miss, which balances out to average in some formidable manner.

Plus, the ambitions of Bullet to the Head are good because it teams up famed action star from the 1980's Sylvester Stallone with modern day action hero Sung Kang, uprising action hero and great actor Jason Momoa and Christian Slater who has fallen on hard times for his run-ins with the law.

Sylvester Stallone gives a decent emotionless performance fit to his character, and Sung Kang makes a decent team with him. But the script doesn't provide Jason Momoa with much to do, and so his lines are minimal. He's good when using them though.

The greatest performance comes from Christian Slater, because despite having a small part, he captures strong line delivery and intensity when working with them. Although this won't result in any career resurgence, it does display that he still has a grip on acting and may surprise us all again someday.

Really, Bullet to the Head works better as a crime-thriller than an action thriller, and his has better grip on the life of an contract killer than Andrew Dominik's recent awful film "Killing them Softly".

Basically, although connecting with the characters isn't likely when you view Bullet to the Head, its mostly interesting and is one of Sylvester Stallone's smaller scale entries into films related to action, and his bare essential performance proves effective enough.

Plus, the action, although consistently strong is burdened by some rough editing and cinematography. Although its significantly better than in most films because the camera doesn't shake and the angles it takes are consistently a strong distance, it just isn't the best. The editing is better than usual, but its still a bit quick.

But the main issue with Bullet to the Head is that its been mishandled. Director Walter Hill does to it what Michael Cimino did to Heaven's Gate, although it doesn't have catastrophic results. The way he does this is by similarly being unsure about whether to make it a character driven story or a solid action film, leaving it being an oddly paced offspring of both genres. Essentially, it may possibly be the world's first arthouse action film.

But even worse is that for a film that could have been done for a budget of less than $10 million (excluding the actors' salaries), somehow Walter Hill pushes it to a point where the budget is $55 million, yet seems too cheap and occasionally lifelessly dull to be a film with that big a budget. In actual fact, the quality of the film overall is slightly lesser than the quality of Sylvester Stallone's lesser known 1981 thriller Nighthawks. Where all the money went is actually a mystery, since the film wasn't released widely enough to put it into the distribution budget. I'm guessing in actuality it all went to the actors, but they don't provide enough to justify $55 million, so I'm guessing Walter Hill just messed plenty up along the way. It's really a mystery how, and it does nothing with its high-concept plot aside from continuously having people shot in the face, even though thats cool. So really it's a half assed effort.

Essentially, Bullet to the Head is largely empty on a budget of $55 million, but its a decent crime thriller and had much potential to it. Merely it has the burden of poor execution from director Walter Hill.