Bullet To The Head

BULLET TO THE HEAD

Director : Walter Hill

Year : 2013

Genre : Action

Rating : *1/2

Starring Sylvester Stallone and directed by Walter Hall, 'Bullet To The Head' is yet another action movie that features a legendary star reliving his glory days in a blood filled explosive extravaganza. Dubbed 'geri-action' movies, these films poke fun at the ridiculousness of the genre and also feature a large number of movie references which die - hard fans of the actors and the action genre as a whole will understand. Because of this, films such as Arnold Schwarzenegger's 'The Last Stand' and the star studded 'The Expendables' series have been hugely popular and have performed very well at the box - office. However unlike the movies which has preceded it, 'Bullet To The Head' fails to bring any subversive humour or interesting characters to the screen. Relying on the audiences supposed lust for blood splatters and endless explosions, 'Bullet To The Head' leeches off the popularity of it's legendary star and the pulling power of the genre.

Stallone and Sung Yang play respectively a hit man and a detective who team up to bring down  a mob boss who has killed both of their partners.

Director Walter Hill is probably best known as the producer and screenwriter of the hugely successful 'Alien' franchise. Not a stranger to the action genre, Hill would seem like the ideal person to direct a silly blood - drenched tale. Based on the French graphic novel 'Du Plomb Dans La Tete', the film tells the now familiar story of a cop and a fugitive joining up to fight a bigger villain whom both have a vendetta against. Due to the frequency of this plot being used in Hollywood and the amount of times we have seen it in past films in recent years, the movie can be paced and planned just by it's synopsis; this means that any sense of threat or danger is destroyed almost immediately. Added to this, a poor use of CGI blood and overuse of boring explosions, 'Bullet To The Head' does nothing to improve the genre it is leeching from or the name of it's star.

In 1976, Sylvester Stallone won an Oscar for his fantastic portrayal of the underdog boxer Rocky Balboa. His characterisations were so good and his acting was so evocative and inspiring that the Academy believed that he was the best actor of that entire year. Watching 'Bullet To The Head', you would never imagine that he could possibly have won anything but Razzies throughout his entire career. His performance in the film is very bad and his delivery is reminiscent of that of a growling dog. At one point, I thought my laptop was going to explode due to the lowness of the frequencies emitting from it's speakers. Ever heard of brown noise? Playing a hitman who never kills women or children (we've never seen that before), Stallone brings an uninteresting character to the screen and does nothing to allow us to connect or even like him. Rude to everyone he meets and afflicted with annoying idiosyncrasies such as drinking only one brand of whisky and obsessed with tattoos, Stallones performance is nothing like as good as the roles he played that made him a star in the first place. There is nothing of John Rambo or Rocky Balboa in his performance at all.

 Co - starring with Stallone is Sung Kang who is no stranger to the action genre, having starred in 'Die Hard 4' and 'The Fast & The Furious' franchise. He has fun as Stallone's plucky sidekick and he does his best in the face of stupid and infantile material. The villain played by Jason Momoa is as conventional as they come and his goons are equally stupid and dull, clearly having graduated from the same shooting school as the Stormtroopers.

I don't know if it is just my boredom with the genre or if the movie really is as bad as I think it is. I was thoroughly disengaged throughout the film and I didn't care about anything that happened on screen or the fates of any of the characters. In another day or two, 'Bullet To The Head' will have escaped my mind and to me, that is no bad thing. It is a loud, dull and lifeless film that may only be worsened with a bullet to the head.

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