Bullet to the Head

I feel some satisfaction that this one flopped in American cinemas. This type of 80s action movies is dead and should remain dead, no resurrection! One every year or two, like The Expendables or something straight to video, I can take, but this becoming a trend for bigger productions…. thanks God, no. (07/06/2013)

You can’t sit on two chairs at once. That would always be uncomfortable. Hill tries here to serve up modern twists but in an old form, using old procedures and it’s completely weird, even the ridicule of cellphones and Google. The beginning is uninteresting, the viewer doesn’t have an ounce of sympathy for the characters, then it starts turning into a movie that is somehow familiar and that occasionally surprises with its directness and novel (massacres) style. Sly is super evil (the ominous name Jimmy Bonomo!), delivers gravelly one-liners (sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t), but he keeps healthily detached and you can see in his expression that he is resting in this movie. Another trump is the Momoa, the killer. I wish him many more roles, the kid has it in him. One thing that really spoils this movie is the casting of the boring, lifeless Sung Kang (I don’t know why they replaced the original Thomas Jane), who gave a terrible performance. His poker face, zero chemistry between him and Sly’s daughter. It only occurred to me toward the end that there was meant to be some. Slater overacted terribly and Akinnuoye-Agbaje receives the prize for the dumbest ever bad guy. Bullet to the Head is a strange hodgepodge, but I enjoyed and mainly it surprised me more than I was willing to admit just five minutes ago. Now, please forgive me, I’m off to have another watch of the fight with the axes and the speech about courageous firefighters. (27/05/2013)

A proper homage to the 1980s. From the music, through the editing, the sounds of blows, the voice-overs, the script. Walter Hill put it together well, the film works. It doesn't want to say too much, nor does it have much to say. It's about having fun, nostalgically reminiscing, and moving on. Stallone is in fantastic form even at his age, the action is tough, without slow motion, plenty of blood, exactly as it should be. Jason Momoa is a phenomenal opponent. It was solid entertainment, without further ambitions. (23/06/2013)

A straightforward, slightly dumb, disposable old-school offering that is unfortunate for its rather low budget which was probably swallowed mainly by the fees for the famous five names appearing here. The rest of the cast is made up of absolutely awful (non)actors who are incapable of saying one line with it sounding at least a little natural. The second flaw was pushing Stallone into the noirish, cynically sarcastic voiceover. Sly has a lot of things going for him, but delivering complex lines is not one of them. But when he’s quite or just filtering out a wisecrack through his teeth, it’s the Sly we know and love. Otherwise there isn’t much to fault, unless you aren’t expecting anything that I mentioned above. (25/05/2013)

There’s really no great miracle here, and if it weren't for Stallone in the lead role, my rating would be even one star less. The script has nothing in it with which to surprise, except perhaps for the way it resembles the scripts that have been used by Seagal, Lundgren and others in recent years. The direction is nothing miraculous, the action scenes lack tension, and the only thing worthwhile was the final battle with axes, but which ended rather stupidly. What I really liked was Mazzar's music, which I've been listening to for a few weeks now. If I have to compare, Arnold's more imaginative and less serious/ridiculous The Last Stand is clearly better. (06/07/2013)