Film Review: Bloodshot

Vin Diesel stars in Bloodshot, an adaptation of the Valiant Comics series about a super soldier with a high-tech bloodstream.

A decorated and dedicated marine, Ray Garrison (Diesel) is touring the Amalfi Coast with his wife Gina (Talulah Riley) when they are kidnapped and killed by a maniac (Toby Kebbell) with an axe to grind. Brought back to life by a team of scientists and enhanced with nanotechnology, Garrison is hellbent on exacting revenge at all costs – but he soon realises that there's more to the man pulling the strings (Guy Pearce) than meets the eye.

As a fan of both sci-fi and action, Bloodshot is an incredibly frustrating experience in that it excels at neither, and instead chooses to half-ass them both. The central concept – a super solider who is sustained by nanotech and controlled by a secretive government lab – is rife with potential, but Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer's screenplay doesn't explore this in much depth.

The film includes enhanced humans, cybernetic limbs and augmented reality, but only uses them as tools to propel the plot, rather than examining the implications of human and tech intersecting. It's like those recent Call of Duty games that dipped into the whole 'advanced warfare' setting; it's just window dressing for another generic action film, rather than a nuanced and complex look at tomorrow's tech.

Worse still, the action sequences aren't even that good. The first big action set piece – glimpsed in the GIF above – is probably the pick of the bunch, as Garrison hunts a group of goons through a darkened tunnel. The others are less compelling, and suffer from rapid-fire editing that makes the choreography and storytelling hard to follow.

A chase sequence around the midpoint of the movie is probably the worst, as the director is clearly straining to shoot around the fact that they're not in London, where the scene is set. The finale doesn't fare much better, as Diesel and his foe are turned into weightless ragdolls that are flung around the screen. By this point, storytelling logic has gone out of the window – both literally and figuratively.

The supporting cast are a parade of one-dimensional archetypes; Pearce's scientist doesn't have any clear motivation for his actions, and this extends to the rest of characters around him.

Eiza Gonzalez slots nicely into the designated spot for 'kickass female character with a heart of gold', Sam Heughan is the 'cocksure, trigger-happy twat' and Alex Hernandez's Tibbs is 'the other one'. Only Lamorne Morris' Wilfred Wigans – 'wisecracking techie in the van' – is in anyway memorable.

The Verdict: 3.5/10

A second-rate comic book adaptation that lacks imagination, compelling action and a personality to call its own. 

Bloodshot is in cinemas across Australia now.