Vin Diesel’s Bloodshot Review: A Badass Sci-Fi Epic

Vin Diesel’s Bloodshot Review. The Fast and Furious star embraces his robotic acting style in this latest action-epic. 

Based on the bestselling comic book, Vin Diesel stars as Ray Garrison, a soldier recently killed in action and brought back to life as the superhero Bloodshot by the RST corporation.

With an army of nanotechnology in his veins, he’s an unstoppable force –stronger than ever and able to heal instantly. But in controlling his body, the company has sway over his mind and memories, too. Now, Ray doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not – but he’s on a mission to find out.

Review

Vin Diesel is notoriously known for his wooden and almost robotic acting style. Bloodshot takes this knowledge and has Vin Diesel playing a futuristic human-cyborg creation who exacts vengeance for the death of his wife. But all is not as it seems.

Playing a character called Ray Garrison Vin Diesel wakes up in a laboratory surrounded by ex-military personnel who have all gone through various procedures to help with various injuries sustained from battle.

Sadly the three other experimental candidates played by Eiza Gonzales, Sam Heughan and Alex Hernandez aren’t heavily featured.

Out of the three Eiza Gonzales’s character, Katie has the most screen-time but sadly even her arc vanishes as there’s no clear explanation or reasoning as to why she’s doing what she’s doing.

Vin Diesel playing a cyborg that uses nanites to heal his wounds is certainly one of his most convincing roles to date.

His acting is robotic, his line delivery is robotic, his whole demeanor is robotic and for once it doesn’t look out of place on screen as that’s the part he’s playing!

The rest of the movie, however, is a bit of a mess.

Bloodshot has been panned by critics but I did find some enjoyment in the action sequences. Whilst edited in a way that almost makes you miss certain moves and elements of the fight scene they were still engaging. They definitely reminded of CGI fight sequences of old.

Maybe I’m just easily pleased?

Where Bloodshot does fail is the plot holes and story that doesn’t contain any depth of character. Furthermore, there are some parts that have you questioning just exactly what’s going on.

We have characters changing sides with not much explanation behind it.

For me, the stand out performer of the show was Lamorne Morris who plays Wilfred Wigans a hacker who arrives around the 90-minute mark into our little CGI festival of fun.

Wilfred brings a comedic relief to the role and is a welcome addition to a film that feels a little run of the mill and lethargic at times. 

I certainly need to give a special mention to Guy Pearce who plays Dr. Emil Harting the leader and owner of this new forward-moving nanotech company. His character was believable he had his own personal motives and he was interesting to watch.

It was a shame his character wasn’t fleshed out a bit more. By adding some more weight to the character it would have given more depth to the story. 

Bloodshot may be a film with Vin Diesel as the lead actor but it never feels as thou he is. We’re being told multiple stories from different vantage points. Whilst this does become convoluted it’s nice that he wasn’t focused on 24-7.

What I enjoyed about Bloodshot was how everything was orchestrated. Clever uses of tech that turn Vin Diesel’s character, Ray Garrison, into an ass-kicking machine. It was cool to see that the film went down the sci-fi route rather than the superhero route.

Vin Diesel’s new powers are outlandish and absolutely insane but it’s still a film to provide the escapism we all need right now.

Given the impact of COVID-19, Columbia Pictures the Bloodshot release date is now March 27, 2020, on streaming platforms.

The Valiant comic-book property will be available for digital purchase Retailer wide at £13.99.

Vin Diesel’s Bloodshot Review by Sean Evans