I'd read some Valiant back in the day and I did find them enjoyable - perhaps more consistently so than the Marvel and DC comics I was more familiar with, which were often hit-or-miss for me. While I had only read a few issues of Bloodshot and only knew a bit about the character, I was still looking forwards to this movie because I like Vin Diesel and was interested in seeing Valiant's characters on the big screen. So I made sure to avoid watching the trailers. That might have been a mixed blessing.
After watching the movie I went back to see how much the trailers gave away. The simple answer is: far, FAR too much. The part of the movie that I probably enjoyed the most was something that would have been ruined for me if I had seen the trailers. So if you haven't watched the trailers yet: please don't!
Having said that, the first half hour or so of this film is... not great. The film picks up after that, but I think I had already checked out a little bit by that point. Perhaps if I had seen the trailers before the movie, I might have not have let myself "give up" too soon because I would have known that better stuff was on the way? Maybe. Overall I still hold that the trailers are to be avoided like the plague, I just thought it was worth discussing as this is a bit of an unusual situation.
Anyway, enough of that. Let's get to the movie. As I have already alluded to, the first half hour or thereabouts might not impress very much, at least in terms of story. This is a superhero origin story, so you're going to run into some tired cliches; more so than usual in my opinion. However the story does pick up after that and becomes more interesting.
To be clear I'm only talking about the story. This is an action film, and the action is solid from the start. In fact the film's most unique and stylish action scene occurs quite early on - and it's a very cool action scene that I reckon is worth watching. This is probably a good time to mention that I thought the action was quite creative and not at all repetitive; pretty much each action scene had a different "feel", if that makes sense. Now yes, there was some degree of the usual Hollywood quick-cut editing and camera-shaking, which let things down a bit, but I felt it wasn't nearly as bad as a lot of films I've seen in the last decade or so.
I thought Vin Diesel did a good job as Ray Garrison. Of course he handled the "angry guy busting heads" parts well, both in terms of expression and physicality, but I also thought he worked in the (admittedly few) softer scenes too. Guy Pearce was great as Doctor Harting, I felt he helped give the role a lot of depth. I loved Eiza González as KT and wish she'd had more to do than just stand around most of the time. I initially expected Lamorne Morris to be annoying as Wilfred Wigans but I actually ended up finding him very entertaining.
Now I've praised the action, the acting, and allowed that while the story is not great at first it gets better. So you would probably think I that I enjoyed the movie, right? Well, the truth is I left the cinema feeling cold. The ingredients are there on paper, but I just didn't end up feeling invested. One big reason I think is that Bloodshot never ended up facing an opponent who had been built up to be as powerful as Bloodshot himself had been shown to be. As a result almost all the action scenes, while fairly stylish and creative, ended up feeling... somewhat toothless. There was never a real sense of threat, a sense that he might fail. I will elaborate a little bit more in the spoilers section, but basically the action didn't actually end up exciting me the way action scenes with actual stakes do, even when they are more visually mundane.
What's more, while I enjoyed the performances, we just never learn enough about the characters themselves to really care about them. At least I didn't really feel so. Which was especially a problem since the characters' lives were the only things really at stake.
I think it's fair to have expected Bloodshot to be a "superhero movie" - the poster has the word "superhero" on it after all. The thing is though, he never actually does anything heroic. Unlike the average superhero movie, there's never a sense that anything is at stake, other than the protagonist's life and self-serving personal goals. Of course that can work if you make us care about the character, but as stated I didn't feel that we got to know him well enough for that. So for me, I just ended up feeling... uninvested.
Overall I fear I must give this film a 6/10. It does a lot of things well, but sadly they were undermined for me by the film's shortcomings. I don't think you'll regret watching it, you'll probably enjoy some of the action scenes if that's your thing, but we've seen much better entries in the genre in recent years.
Still, I hope it does well enough for us to get more Valiant movies. I'd love to see more of their characters, especially the ones in Valiant's future setting: Rai, Magnus, that sort of thing. It might not have the same market appeal as current-day superheroes, but at least it would stand out more from the Marvel and DC fare that we've seen.
#####SPOILER WARNING#####
I found myself checkout out early on as the movie rushed through one cliche after another: the soldier in the sandbox, coming home to his wife, waking up with superpowers, getting his revenge; it all felt very uninspired. So I loved the mid-movie twist (that was totally given away in the trailer) that it was all fake, a script written by one guy who eveyone could tell was just ripping off the movies. Now it's not the first time I've seen this plot device, but I still thought it was a nice twist that is still somewhat original. However, as much as I loved it, it didn't change the fact that the first third of the movie or thereabouts was unimpressive. Deliberately making the first half-hour of your movie kind of bad is an interesting and risky decision.
The first of Garrison's action scenes was a fairly well executed, fairly grounded gunfight. The second was a brief but well choreographed complex martial arts battle. The third was a very stylish super-powered gunfight that made good use of the environment, of lighting and contrast, particles, explosions, and slow motion. The fourth was a high-speed and high-tech chase with characters running through walls and jumping over obstacles. The fifth was a very vertical battle with characters falling and climbing as they wrecked the environment and each other. Like I said, they all had a different feel. However, after the first two at least, there wasn't much of a sense of danger. At the start of the tunnel fight we see Garrison take a chest full of rifle rounds, and then get back up; at that point we knew there was no chance of him failing, it was all just style over substance after that. And it was the same in every fight: he couldn't be defeated in battle, but could be turned off with a single button press.
Now I don't mind a no-stakes action scene, one where we know he hero is going to win easily, if it demonstrates the hero's skill. But in most of Garrison's fight scenes he took multiple hits that would have been lethal, or at least fight-ending, and only succeeded because of how overpowered his nanites were. I mean, yes, technically it was demonstrating his abilities, but to me at least there's a difference between a fight where the hero wins easily thanks to his skill and intelligence, and one where he doesn't even have to make an effort because his opponent's literally can't hurt him at all, even if he stands completely still.
Compare that to KT's only real action scene, a small brief affair where she fights a handful of guys and takes them down without taking any real damage, and her fight scene was actually much more enjoyable and impressive to me because it had real stakes and also demonstrated more personal skill on her behalf; the two things missing from most of Garrison's fights.
Speaking of the nanites, I did not like the depiction of nanotech in this film, with streams of nanites flying through the air and so on. It's partly a personal thing, but also it came across to me as overpowered, at least in the context of this film - as mentioned they never actually set Garrison up with an adversary of his own caliber. His final opponent, Doctor Hartman, was never really established as a physical threat. I really do find it anticlimactic for an action film's final battle to be against an opponent who is not very threatening.
I did like how Doctor Hartman was written and portrayed. He really did come across as the concerned doctor at first, seemingly out of his depth trying to deal with the strong-willed Garrison. Then when he turned villain he wasn't a mustache-twirling cartoon who was evil for evil's sake; he tried to avoid hurting his subordinates even when they toed the line, and clearly had his own rationalizations for his actions that he explained as if he believed them.
Why did Bloodshot allow himself to die at the end? I'm sure he could have taking down Hartman without sacrificing himself if he wanted to, yet he didn't. So I guess he wanted to die? Knowing that there was nothing left for him once his vengeance was done, he chose murder-suicide. And yet when he woke up later he acted like everything was fine. Hmm.
So I guess they now have a cure for DEATH? Garrison, with no active nanites, was blown up, then he wakes up again. That means they have an actual cure for death. I wonder if they will actually use it for anything other than having Bloodshot play hero? Guessing not. Will KT and Wigans at least partake of the cup of immortality and become as unkillable as Bloodshot? Again, guessing not. They'll probably act like that was the last of the nanites or something, even though I have to assume that they are self-replicating because it's not like they can last forever.
Speaking of which, how did Wigans wake Bloodshot up the first time? Didn't the EMP destroy the nanites? I guess it just "knocked them out", although I don't think that's how EMP's and electronics work?
While I'm talking nanites, Hartman mentioned that they needed energy or something? But we never see them being recharged? We do see them being replaced, I guess they must be taking them to recharge them while replacing them with already-charged nanites? Perhaps when we're told that Garrison's nanite levels are dropping, what they are referring to is their energy reserves? So at 0% his nanites are still intact, just their batteries are dead. And when Wigans improved them so that Garrison would be self-sustaining, he basically gave them a way to recharge themselves? I guess it makes sense that way, I just don't feel it was communicated very clearly in the movie itself.
I mean, I'm still not sure how he was walking around when his nanite levels were 0 seeing as we're told his blood IS nanites. I guess even with his blood basically being non-functional, he was able to last the few seconds needed to take down Hartman. I guess.
There's a subplot about Bloodshot and KT feeling alone, but... I dunno, I didn't really feel it? Like, it was kind of there, but I didn't feel like it affected the plot in any way?
So KT breathes through a hole in her chest. It was a nice touch how they showed her taking advantage of her "immunity to inhalants" a couple of times. What I don't understand though is how she speaks normally or blow smoke into Wigan's face? Surely her lungs aren't connected to her mouth - if they are then why the hole in the chest? Also, if she did get nanites, would they repair her body so she doesn't need the breather apparatus anymore? I assume so.
On a related note, there's a part where Hartman shuts down her breathing apparatus and she's on the floor in like 20 seconds. Hell, I can stay standing while holding my breath for over 20 seconds without inhaling first, and I'm in pretty poor physical shape. She was a navy diver, we saw her hanging around underwater for ages earlier, she should be able to go at least a minute or two without collapsing! Yes, I know it was to make a point, demonstrating the power dynamic between the two characters, and that the timeframe was compressed for brevity. I'm not complaining, it made sense narratively/cinematically. I'm just nitpicking. You know, for fun.
The action scene in the tunnel was very cool, but I kept getting distracted by the thought that flour in air is somewhat explosive; every time a bullet was fired or a grenade went off or a sack of flour was thrown, I was wondering if it would trigger a massive explosion. If they weren't after an explosion, couldn't they have used a more inert powder instead?
I'm trying not to think about the number of bodyguards that Bloodshot killed. Even if their bosses had some dirty dealings, we have no reason to believe that they deserved to die (I don't even want to discuss whether it would have been justifiable to kill them all even if their client was the killer Bloodshot believed him to be). All I'm saying is, he's got some blood on his hands; if they want us to see him as a hero they really need to have him do some more heroic stuff in the sequel. You know, if there is one of course.
