One of the best things about Bullet to the Head, a rather enjoyable new actioner from genre veteran Walter Hill, is Sylvester Stallone’s face. Cracked and beat-up looking, his too-tanned skin, creviced and canyoned, appears to have been subject to the ravages of a sandblaster and the pallor has a waxy texture reminiscent of one of Madame Tussauds’ models. When Sly is called upon to deliver the film’s one-liner-heavy dialogue in his trademark bass monotone, it’s like watching a spooky and fierce outsized ventriloquist’s dummy.
This is mean and lean genre filmmaking
That sounds like a bad thing but I mean it as a compliment. Stallone can still play tough and it’s just great fun to watch him. At nearly 70 years old – and the mileage shows – his physique, all biceps and no neck, still has an imposing industrial strength bulge. Best of all, Sly’s snake eyes retain their play and wit, even if they appear to be swallowed by a face that has, it is rumoured, seen the business end of a cosmetic surgeon’s scalpel. Here, Stallone is perfectly cast: he’s playing an aging, wearied hit man in pursuit of his partner’s killer. Called Bobo, he has a daughter, Sarah Shahi, and is in possession of lots of tatts, lives in a swamp and drinks 'bullet’ bourbon. He also kills lots of people. The casualties pile up here so fast I think the body count reached double-figures by the 20-min mark.
The screenplay is by Alessandro Camon, who wrote The Messenger (2009), a solemn film about grief and moral responsibility. Bullet to the Head frets not one whit over the ideological underpinnings of anything at all. This is mean and lean genre filmmaking and it takes place in a world where moral certitude is a badge of honour.
It’s an adaptation of a French graphic novel called Du Plomb Dans la Tête, written by Matz (Alexis Nolent) and illustrated by Colin Wilson. Bullet’s look – dark, heated, and full of bold exaggerations in both décor and characters – is a place where realism never sees fit to intrude. A strong nod, I think, to its literary source. Set in New Orleans, Bullet to the Head’s actual location is situated somewhere deep in comic-book macho movieland. Happily though, it bypasses that tone of smug indifference to genre and style so fashionable in post-modern action cinema. (Gangster Squad, anyone?) This movie doesn’t need any self-reflexive, ironic alibis.
The plot offers up a fair amount of misdirection, cryptic clues and confusions in its first few minutes before it eventually settles into a mismatched buddy movie not unlike Hill’s 1982 hit, 48 Hours.
Not having read the novel I can only, with respect, tentatively speculate over what Camon contributed, but I suspect on the evidence it had to do with keeping the thing moving, funny, lively and coherent. It is probably no coincidence that these same no-nonsense virtues emerge powerfully in Walter Hill’s best pictures, like The Driver (1978) and Southern Comfort (1981).
In the story, Bobo is chasing down a knife-wielding crook whose forearms and neckless-ness seems a fair match for Stallone’s unique physicality; he is played by Jason Momoa from Game of Thrones. This dude turns out to be the target of cop Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang from the Fast and the Furious). The action contrives it so that Sly’s hit man and Kang’s cop must set aside their natural enmity for each other as they pursue this mutual enemy. In the process, the pair uncover a far-reaching criminal conspiracy involving the rich and powerful, who plan to divest honest folk of their cash via a dirty real estate deal (a sharp bit of contemporary 'commentary’).
The cast of baddies amount to cameos, with Christian Slater as a crooked lawyer and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as a criminal mastermind the stand-outs.
Bullet to the Head doesn’t quite have the kind of clockwork efficiency that Hill is famous for. The weak link is its 'odd couple’ plot. In 48 Hours, the conflict was based on race and it worked because it was timely and stinging. Here the 'partners’ bicker over age, race and technical proficiency and none of it means anything more than a lot of lame-o gags about iPhones and kung fu. Worse is the superficial attitude to this basic story concept; the pair never actually forms a bond. Bobo dominates and Kwon just doesn’t have much to do but provide exposition and light relief; it’s telling that the film’s best bits are where Stallone faces the odds solo.
Hill remains a master at action; unlike most modern directors, his fight scenes have tension and suspense and the plentiful violence actually has impact. You never get confused or lost in the mayhem. You feel the danger. Bullet has at least half a dozen very good set pieces including its climax, where Stallone and Momoa duke it out with axes in an old warehouse that looks like a tumble down gladiatorial arena.
US critics have blasted this as a '80s throwback, but I’m grateful for its lack of pretension and was never bored. Like Stallone’s hero, Bullet to the Head knows what is, what it’s doing and where it is going and makes no apologies for any of that.
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