It took me probably an hour to get through Bloodshot’s first act. I almost gave up on the movie two or three times. I was already writing a livid theoretical review in my head, tallying up all the inconsistencies, stupid contrivances, and tired cliches it was throwing at me at record speed. But then — then — Bloodshot did something that outright shocked me, something I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced in a movie before: it explicitly acknowledged my complaints, and gave a convincing explanation for each and every seemingly bad choice.
But let’s back up for a second, because I’m going to assume a number of you are thinking ‘what the hell is Bloodshot?!’ That’s understandable, as Bloodshot released in theaters on March 13, 2020 — at almost the exact moment the entire world started shutting down due to COVID-19. It made a quick leap to video-on-demand and Redbox (which lured me into watching it with a free movie coupon), but with so much working against it, never really broke into the zeitgeist. Anyway, Bloodshot is a superhero movie based off the Valiant Comics* character starring Vin Diesel that received mixed reviews. Sounds like it should be a decent time, right? Well…not at first…
*Full disclosure: a friend and former editor of mine currently works for Valiant Comics, but that has no bearing on my opinion of the movie whatsoever other than making me a bit more interested in checking it out in the first place.
Like I said, the film’s first act is so frustrating that I paused it multiple times and just sat there, trying to force myself to either turn it off or just finish it already. To explain why means LOTS of spoilers, so, if you care at all about seeing Bloodshot and haven’t, you might want to wait to read this one. That said, the trailer spoils just about every single thing that happens in the movie, including its major twist, so if you’ve already seen it, feel free to keep on reading, and if you’re trying to avoid spoilers, avoid the trailer too. This is definitely one of those movies where knowing what’s going to happen makes actually watching it pretty much pointless.
So, Bloodshot starts off like one of Michael Bay’s wet dreams, with heavily saturated colors, quick cuts and odd angles, soldiers, and scantily clad women. Vin Diesel’s character*, a hot-shot soldier, saves some hostages and goes home to his hot wife, Gina. The next day both are kidnapped by a group of mercenaries led by a man named Martin Axe and tortured for information about who tipped Vin Diesel off to the hostages, and when he has no answers, first they kill Gina, then him.
*Vin Diesel’s character has a name, and it’s actually shouted almost constantly throughout the movie, but I can’t for the life of me remember it, and I think that’s significant because it shows how little of an impact the character leaves. He’s just a Vin Diesel type, so that’s how I’m referring to him. Also, just putting it out there, they never actually call him Bloodshot at any point.
Killing off a female character to motivate a male one is a pretty big pet peeve of mine. In comics, where it was a major problem for a very long time, it’s referred to as “Women in Refrigerators,” after a Green Lantern story where Kyle Rayner’s girlfriend was murdered by a villain and her body stuffed in Kyle’s fridge. Women in Refrigerators isn’t necessarily against bad things happening to women in comics — you couldn’t have female superheroes at all if you eliminated that — but was founded specifically to highlight a trend of women’s suffering being used as a prop to further the stories of male characters, with almost no thought given to the women involved at all.
Action movies are just as guilty as comics of indulging in this trope, and this first act of Bloodshot is a textbook example. A few weeks ago I complained about Upgrade doing the same thing, but at least that movie spends a rather decent amount of time building up the character of Asha and her relationship with the protagonist before killing her off; in Bloodshot, we see more of Gina’s side-boob than her personality.
The sequence where Martin Axe murders Gina and Vin Diesel is frustrating for a several different reasons. First of all, Vin Diesel is never presented as anything more than a soldier. Soldiers follow orders; why in the world would Axe think that he had any sort of say or intel on the matter? It’s not an unforgivable writing sin, but it does paint Axe as an annoyingly stupid character. Reason number two cements that opinion: when Axe walks into the room where his hostages are tied up, he does so by dancing along to the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” It’s a tonally jarring and frustratingly cliche moment that feels ripped out of the screenplay of a freshman film student trying to be Quentin Tarantino. I definitely rolled my eyes.
Vin Diesel next wakes up, with no memory of his past, in the lab of Rising Spirit Tech, where CEO Dr. Emil Harting reveals that the military passed Vin Diesel’s body along to his company, and Harting brought him back to life by infusing Vin Diesel’s body with nanomachines, which also increase his strength and stamina and allow him to regenerate from any injury. Later than night, when talking with a fellow patient, Vin Diesel hears “Psycho Killer” playing on the RST Stereo, regains all his memories, and immediately takes one of RST’s vehicles to track down Martin Axe and get his revenge.
This whole sequence just staggered me. “Psycho Killer” playing is a weird contrivance for sure, but then Vin Diesel just walks into RST’s car bay, steals a car, and drives off in it? We don’t even see him hotwire it? Harting and the RST’s staff are in contact with Vin Diesel the entire time, trying to talk him down, but never seal off the car bay? We see the RST staff has a connection to Vin Diesel’s nanomachines since they can see how the nanomachines are tracking Axe; shouldn’t they be able to shut them down remotely? It’s just so…incredibly contrived and stupid.
But the scene that truly made me feel like I was having a stroke comes when Vin Diesel returns to RST after killing Axe. One of the other soldiers, Dalton, is strapping Vin Diesel into the device that will recharge his nanomachines, but suddenly starts seething, chewing Vin Diesel out about how he always has to clean up after his messes and that he’s tired of it and that he hates him so much. It comes out of nowhere! I legitimately thought I had missed something and had to rewind the DVD to check. Was this bad editing? Did someone delete a vital scene from the movie?
Then, though, then comes the twist I mentioned way back in the first paragraph: almost none of what I just saw was real. Vin Diesel once had a girlfriend named Gina, but they split up because his job came first. Then Vin Diesel died and his body was given to RST and revived with nanomachines. But the movie’s entire opening sequence — the hostage rescue, the night with his wife, the kidnapping and murder — was just a computer simulation playing out in Vin Diesel’s brain. Harting has a long list of former collaborators he needs killed, so he keeps inserting them into the simulation and has them kill Vin Diesel’s virtual wife. Then, in real life, Vin Diesel hunts this person down and murders them with his “newfound” powers, because, much like Liam Neeson, nothing stops Vin Diesel when he’s out for revenge.
As a supervillain plan it might be a bit elaborate, but as a plot twist it’s genius, because it addresses every single complaint I had about the movie up to that point and gives an explanation for them. Gina wasn’t really “fridged” because the real life Gina is still alive and well; her computer simulation feels like a prop because she is, simply a replica of the original that exists only to motivate Vin Diesel. The torture sequence feels badly written because it is; juvenile hacker/programmer Eric created the sequence, and flat out admits that the “Psycho Killer” dance is dumb and almost ruins the whole thing, but that he just liked it and wanted to throw it in. Vin Diesel is allowed to leave RST and pursue Axe because that’s exactly what Harting wants; their attempts to stop him were all for show. The scene with Dalton feels like I missed something because I did; I missed all those other revenge missions Dalton had to go pick Vin Diesel up after.
This twist turns the entire movie around, but does it save it? The rest of Bloodshot after this point is unoffensive but fairly mediocre, but it’s really that first act I keep coming back to. Yes, the twist reveals that the “bad writing” in the first act was deliberate and with purpose, but it doesn’t change the fact that I spent a good third of the movie actively angry at it. Admittedly, that’s just my personal response; to some viewers, the parts that pissed me off might not bother them, or they might assume they’re clues rather than immediately write them off as bad writing. But I can’t shake the fact that I almost turned off the movie multiple times during that first act because it seemed so poorly done, and I wonder how many viewers the movie might have actually lost before its big twist kicked in. If you actively piss your audience off enough, that feeling will stick with them; that first act still aggravates me even though I know that all the things I hated about it weren’t actually true, or were feints. I think it’s incredibly clever writing. It was still painful to sit through.
So that’s what prompts my opening question: can a clever twist save a stupid first act? I’m honestly not sure. But it was fascinating to see Bloodshot try.
CHECK OUT
One of Bloodshot’s script writers is Eric Heisserer, who won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie Arrival. You should check Arrival out for sure — it manages its own interesting twist, but is also satisfying from start to finish, and Amy Adams is always terrific — but I want to point attention to Heisserer’s other work for Valiant Comics, the mini-series Secret Weapons (with artists Raul Allen and Patricia Martin). Secret Weapons is the story of three young adults with “useless” superpowers — a girl who can talk to birds, a boy who can generate inanimate objects but can’t control when he does or what they are, another who can turn into a statue — searching for a purpose and running for their lives from those who would use them to their own ends. It’s clever and heartfelt, and the art and layouts especially are intricate, jam-packed with detail and hidden meanings. It’s the best thing I’ve read from Valiant, and that’s not faint praise.
HEY, YOU SHOULD READ THIS
A few weeks ago, in my newsletter about Misremembering Sitcoms, I talked a bit about the many various failed spin-offs of The Brady Bunch. Recently the AV Club published a really interesting article that digs deeper into those spin-offs and the fascination that still exists with the Bradys down to this day. Check it out!
ABOUT
“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and he can be found on Twitter at @ThatSpenceGuy. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!