Emil Harting (Guy Pearce, classing up the joint),
can turn him off with a switch. But when he’s
in action, Garrison is something like a hulking
Terminator who rapidly reassembles when shot
or exploded, just without the sunglasses or
snappy catch phrases
There’s a dull thud to “Bloodshot,” a bruising
action movie that can’t equal its brawn with
brains. It’s a high-tech “Frankenstein” that
cobbles together the sci-fi concepts of various
previous movies before it. Wilson, a visual effects
expert making his directorial debut, films the
actions sequences in a vague, disorienting blur,
sometimes slowing things down in shots of grim
brutalism. One, in a darkened tunnel, is shot
amid a crimson glow and a clouds of powdery
white (from a flour truck). Diesel doesn’t bring
any dramatic heft to the part but he makes a
mean bullet of a man.
“Bloodshot” is, at least, a little more interesting
than it initially appears. It begins to reflect
back on itself, questing what’s real and what
isn’t. Pearce’s Harting turns out to be as much
a film director as a mad scientist, compiling
digital worlds and plot lines for his creations.
(“It was all a simulation” has officially replaced
“It was all a dream” in the movies.) And there
is somewhere in here a salient metaphor for
the plight of soldiers returning home from war
with prosthetic limbs and forced to make for
themselves strange new lives.
Along the way, a few actors give it a pulse.
Eiza González, as the also-enhanced KT, is
compelling enough that the movie feels like it
should have gravitated from Garrison to her.
Lamorne Morris just about steals the movie as
the brilliant but goofy coder Wilfred Wigans.