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The person responsible for the musical choice in the film’s universe is Eric ( Siddharth Dhananjay), the techie who runs Harting’s simulator. It’s as if the filmmakers anticipated my initial response but had no faith that I’d eventually buy into their idea and go along. Emil Harting ( Guy Pearce) makes a snarky comment about the film’s use of the song and how stupid it is. Ten seconds later, I wrote under that, “OK, I’m down.” Later, the villain of the piece, Dr. Taunting a tied-up Garrison, he puts on a goofy coat and dances to “Psycho Killer.” Responding to this needle-drop abuse of the Talking Heads, I wrote “'Psycho Killer'? REALLY?!” in my notepad. Axe is a wacky piece of work with a sadistic streak-in other words, your typical action movie villain. He spends a romantic night with his wife, Gina (Tallulah Riley) before being ambushed by henchmen employed by Martin Axe ( Toby Kebbell).
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I have more respect for a movie that damns the torpedoes, fully commits to its madness, and goes down in flames than one that intentionally sets itself on fire as a precautionary measure.Ĭase in point, and here there be spoilers: “Bloodshot” begins with Garrison returning home after a successful mission. That movie spawned three sequels I can only hope “Bloodshot”’s bloodline ends here.Īdding insult to injury, the screenwriters do that self-defensive meta thing that drives me up the damn wall, where they have characters acknowledge “hey, we’re ripping this particular movie off” and “hee-hee-hee! Aren’t these genre tropes that we’re using really dumb and tired?” There’s such insincerity and passive-aggressive cowardice in this approach it either invites the audience to feel superior to the material or worse, it acknowledges that the filmmakers know they are peddling an inferior product to the consumer and they think you’re a sucker for buying it. The most noticeable influence is “Universal Soldier,” a film that shares so many plot elements that “Bloodshot” can be classified as a blatant rip-off. Films like “ Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” “Robocop” and “Total Recall” are thrown into a blender and the diluted, flavorless results leave you hankering for the original ingredients. Even though “Bloodshot” is an adaptation of a comic book (unread by me), screenwriters Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer take their cues and their plot details from a slew of far better movies in this genre.
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