Bloodshot (2020)

(Amazon Streaming, August 2021) The risk in designing a film to overturn expectations is that first you have to play up expectations, and so many will have trouble making it through the first twenty minutes of Bloodshot, so completely does the film indulge in re-creating a kind of film we’ve all seen too many times before: the special operative left for dead, resurrected with high-tech means by a shadowy outfit dedicated to extrajudicial killing that aligns with his own revenge. Vin Diesel looks the part and plays the part, but this is such familiar territory presented without a shred of reinvention that some are likely to turn it off. But wait… because if Bloodshot doesn’t become a good movie, its second-act turn does make it an acceptable one. For, you see, our hero is manipulated through memory editing and selective briefings to become an unthinking assassin. Once the target is eliminated: memory reset, and implantation of a false revenge narrative for the next target, the rest of the team being in on the deception. That’s not, to be fair, an earth-shaking premise… but it’s better than the dreck served in the first fifteen minutes. It also allows the film to become just a bit more daring with its action sequences: By the time the climax hits, the elevator fighting sequence is actually kind of enjoyable. As for Diesel, well, this is the kind of meathead role that he’s typecast in: you do get his usual persona, but nothing much more. (Despite some provocative material at the edges of its premise, Bloodshot never goes for more than the emotionally obvious.)  Some of Dave Wilson’s direction is slick, albeit perhaps a bit too frenetic when it comes time to let his action sequences develop. The result is not that remarkable, but at least it avoids the trainwreck anticipated by the film’s opening moment.