BULLET TO THE HEAD (2013) Dir: Walter Hill

So the Planet Hollywood guys each had a film released in the first 2 months of 2013, Arnie had The Last Stand, Bruce had Die Hard 5 and Stallone had Bullet To The Head. This next review takes a look at Stallone's 2013 effort, the excitingly awesome BULLET TO THE HEAD which is directed by Walter Hill. Check out my review after the jump...

Anyone who knows me and reads this site will know how much I love the action genre. From the 10 Days Of Mayhem leading up to the Welsh Premier of The Raid to the countless reviews of action films that are posted on the site, I love to watch shit blow up and people getting shot in the face, call me a sadist but this shit entertains me. I know it sounds like I'm a crazy person but I know the difference between real and fiction, which for a film reviewer is probably one of the things we should always take into consideration especially when some critics state “how the film lacks realism”. For me film is supposed to entertain, I don't look at real life situations and think 'oh they should make a film out of this horrific real life scenario', which is one of the reasons I haven't watched Oliver Stone's World Trade Centre, I remember when that shit went down, where I was and what I was doing because that is something that you just cannot forget, but do I want to be constantly reminded of such terrible real life events? No, I want to see Stallone take out the entire Burmese army or Arnold Schwarzenegger blow up an island. Action cinema is escapist entertainment, sometimes they get it completely wrong (A Good Day To Die Hard) and sometimes they get it completely right (Bullet To The Head), but which will people choose to give their money too because it definitely wasn't Bullet To The Head which was an unfortunate flop in both the U.S and U.K and AGDTDH was a huge hit. My question is this, why was BTTH such a flop, it had Stallone and it was directed by God himself, Walter Hill, so how did it fail?. I think the studios may be right when it comes to the 12A certificate, an 18 or a 15 rating can kill a movie. You see everyone goes on about how they want to see an old school 80s style R rated action flick, the swearing, the honest to goodness uber violence and the funny cheesy one liners, but when you are presented with what for me is the best action film since The Raid last year, people pass and go with the watered down, over stylized crap like A Good Day To Die Hard. Bullet To The Head is old school, it's a gritty in your face, blood spraying, one liner saying, bullet to your fucking face, and you people dumped on it like it was some shitty Steven Seagal DTV action flick, shame on you (unless of course you did go and see Bullet To The Head, then cheers buddy). The complete lack of promotion on behalf of the distributor is also a major component to the failure of this, especially in the U.K, E1 I’m looking in your direction.

So what is Bullet To The Head about I hear you ask?, well Stallone plays New Orleans' hitman, Jimmy “bobo” Bonomo, who along with his partner do a hit on a corrupt former cop, but someone has hired a Mercenary by the name of Keegan to take out Jimmy and his partner because Jimmy's partner was snooping around and discovered some evidence relating to the film's 'Mr. Big'. Jimmy escapes an attempt on his life and vows revenge for the death of his Partner. Meanwhile Det. Taylor Kwan, the former partner of the corrupt cop arrives in New Orleans to get to the bottom of why the dirty ex-cop was murdered. Kwan reluctantly ends up joining forces with Jimmy and set out on an investigation/mission of revenge. That's pretty much the base plot for this film, there is something about a flash drive and some real estate but it's primarily about a cop and a hitman joining up to kill a bunch of bad guys. It's an action film, a straight A-B action film and it's fast paced, gritty and action packed from start to finish.

Stallone is on top form here giving a fantastic performance as Jimmy Bobo, Jimmy is a bad ass mother fucker, his entire life has been about killing and he's really fucking good at it, he's an old school bad ass, which is referred to quite a bit throughout the film and for a 65 year old, he looks like he did back in the rocky days only a little older, he's ripped and his new Tattoo's make him look even more bad ass. One of my favourite things about this character is that he really has no problem putting someone down, he has no remorse whatsoever, one scene proves this, Jimmy shoot someone, not saying who, in front of Kwan and Kwan reacts by saying “ you don't just kill someone” to which Jimmy replies “ I Just did” which conveys to Kwan that Jimmy is as cold as they come and he's not going down without a fight. It's this complete lack of remorse that sets this character out from the previous Stallone characters. I know that Rambo, Cobra, Barney Ross and John Spartan have all killed people but those guys were good guys, Jimmy is a villain, he's a cold, calculated killer and if you step in his way, he will put a bullet in your head. I don't think I've never come across a Stallone character like this, he's a nasty piece of work and it's one of Stallone's best performances.

Kwan is played by Sung Kang who you may recognize from the Fast And Furious series where he plays Han. He's a decent enough actor but his character is totally forgettable, I mean he's there for pretty much the entire runtime, but 90% of the time he's not really doing anything. Thomas Jane was originally cast in the role as the cop but when Joel Silver came on board as a producer, he fired Jane and cast Kang because he wanted an ethnic actor as the second lead, to which the script was re-written to include references to Asia and to fit the look of the character, had Jane been kept, I think the interplay between both Stallone and Jane would have made this film even better. Jane is a great actor and his Punisher was great, so it's a shame we didn't get to see that version but this one with Kang is still a pretty impressive action flick if a little lacking on the second lead character.

However, we do get a fucking awesome villain in the shape Keegan, the merc hired to kill Jimmy, if you think Jimmy is a cold hearted bastard, Keegan is freezing, this guy is just a sadistic son of a bitch and would probably kill you for accidentally looking at him, he's just a mean mother fucker and he's played brilliantly by fake Conan Jason Momoa (Game Of Thrones). He's Stallone's Bennett , just a complete bastard and lacks any sort of remorse for anything he does, he doesn't just do it for the money, he does it because he enjoys it and it was a surprise to see a villain like this in a modern day action film because they a few and far between these days. I'd take Keegan as a villain over whoever was the villain in that new Die Hard film. The rest of the cast is made of actors like John Seda (The Pacific), Sarah Shahi (The L Word), Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaji (Lost, G.I Joe) and Christian Slater (True Romance).

The biggest selling point for me was the director, Walter Hill makes his return to the big screen after 10 years, his last film was the underrated prison boxing drama Undefeated, so to see him return to the action genre and the buddy movie was a winning combination for me. Walter Hill fucking owns the shit out of any contemporary action directors, he has a style that kicks ass and he brings that style in the truck load to Bullet To The Head, his trademark grit and violence is here and the man can shoot an action scene like nobody's business. Seriously folks, the gun fights are epic, the fist fights are epic, he blows up a boat house and a car and there's no CGI involved, it was all Pyrotechnics, something that is sadly missing from action films these days. Some of the blood however was put in during post production, this could be for any manner of reasons, budget constraints, lack of appropriate lighting, lack of squibs, who knows all I know is that I found it difficult to make out what was real and what was fake which for me is a very good thing. It felt like a Walter Hill film and it looked like a Walter Hill film and this makes me very happy. Another trademark of Walter Hill is the soundtrack, in previous Hill flicks the scores have been done by the brilliant Ry Cooder who is unfortunately missing from this film but composer Steve Mazzaro makes his feature film scoring debut with a beast of a score, emulating the Southern Blues Rock of Ry Cooder and adding heavy bass lines and screaming Harmonica solo's, it absolutely suites the style and tone of the film and I seriously look forward to hearing more from Mazzaro.

BULLET TO THE HEAD is what we've been waiting for, what we've been harping on about, the return of the 80s style action film, it was given to us on a plate and we just pushed it aside for the Hollywood gloss of A Good Day To Die Hard, but believe me when I say in 5 years time, BTTH will be remembered as that film people ignored and it will be loved, it will have it's time to shine and it will be embraced by people, maybe it was released at the wrong time, I don't know, what I do know is that AGDTDH will go down as the film that killed the Die Hard franchise while Bullet To The Head gets the love, it will have a cult following, I don't think people were ready for it even though they asked for it. I fucking loved it, every single violent, foul mouthed minute of it, maybe I’m it's target audience but I dug the fuck out of it I hope when it does get a DVD/Blu-Ray release, people will see for themselves what they missed.