Vin charged with Diesel.

It’s been four years since Bloodshot released and I’ve finally gotten around to watching it. Directed by David S. F. Wilson and written by Jeff Wadlow who wrote the acclaimed action film True Memoirs of an International Assassin as well as Eric Heisserer who wrote that film Bird Box, Bloodshot was intended to be the first film in a shared cinematic universe of Valiant comic films. How has that been going? Well after four years we’ve seen a total of one film in this universe.

Also unfortunately the film came out in March 2020, right around the time everything shut down due to the pandemic. There’s apparently a sequel in development and I don’t know nearly enough about Valiant Comics to pretend I know other characters to be excited about a shared universe series. Lemme do a quick Wikipedia. There’s a character named Diseased Squirrel and I want that movie now please.

Bloodshot stars Vin Diesel as Bloodshot, aka Ray Garrison. Ray Garrison is a soldier who gets kidnapped by a dude named Martin Axe (Toby Kebbell), who kills Garrison’s wife Gina. On the suggestion that Axe kill Garrison before he comes back and kills him, he does that. Bloodshot wakes up in a cool sci-fi robotics factory where he finds out he’s been reconstructed out of nanites. Little tiny robots built to keep him alive and keep him fighting.

Imagine Deadpool or Wolverine but with robot healing powers. Bloodshot escapes from the facility and against orders goes on a revenge mission against Martin Axe. And that’s the furthest I’ll get into the story because it gets pretty interesting after here and the trailer kinda spoils the big twist.

Eiza González plays KT with Sam Heughan as Jimmy Dalton, Talulah Riley as Gina Garrison, Lamorne Morris as Wilfred Wigans and who can forget Guy Pearce as Dr. Emil Harting.

Bloodshot is a good movie. Not great. And not bad either. Its big pull is the visual style as we see Vin Diesel explode into pixels of nanites when he takes damage. It leads to a great moment where Bloodshot takes a bullet right to the dome and you see his head blow out into a spray, and then freeze there. It is without a doubt junk food for the eyes and while it won’t get your brain thinking much, it’s pretty damn enjoyable.

And it wouldn’t be quite the same if Vin Diesel was just kicking the shit out of regular bad guys while basically being a god. He does that, but there’s plenty of other points where he fights against augmented humans. I wish Vin Diesel cared more about this film. Maybe he had other things on his mind, or maybe he was constipated during filming. Perhaps he had a really tasty hoagie waiting for him in his dressing room. Regardless, I couldn’t help but feel that he was distracted the entire time they were filming. His head wasn’t in the game.

Guy Pearce is wasted in this film and Lamorne Morris is charming as always. Bloodshot is purely a “sure why not” film, as in if you’re on Hulu and it pops up on the home page and you’re not sure what you want to watch, you just go “sure why not.” I gave it some extra points for twists and turns in the plot I didn’t see coming because I saw the trailer four years ago and forgot whatever it spoiled.

Rating: B