By: Joe Suszczynski
In his whole film career Sylvester Stallone has only had two great characters in film: Rocky Balboa and John Rambo. Every other performance he has done since those movies has been panned by critics regardless of financial gain.
Despite the criticism he is always faced with, Stallone is back again in a movie called Bullet to the Head.
In this caper, Stallone plays a Louisiana hitman, Jimmy Bonomo, who gets set up on a deal gone bad that ends up with his partner (Jon Seda) dead at the hands of an ex-mercenary (Jason Momoa). Washington D.C. detective Taylor Kwan (Sung Kang) comes to investigate. Bonomo and Kwan team up to take down whoever was responsible for this event.
This film is mediocre to say the least. There are only so many redeeming qualities of this movie.
I’m convinced that Stallone is just playing himself at this point in his career. He brings nothing to this film. Just watch his other recent movies and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Jason Momoa plays the main antagonist. Momoa, who is known for his role on Game of Thrones and the reboot of Conan the Barbarian, plays the typecast muscle guy who uses fists or his firearm rather than words to solve his problems. That typecast does work in most cases and Momoa does fit that profile, but for this movie it does not work. Maybe this role could work for him in another movie with more competent actors and a cohesive screenplay.
The writing for this movie is thin at best. It’s your simple plot lines, nothing special. This movie does not have any depth, but the movie does make aware of that notion so at least it isn’t lying to you about being more than it is. But in spite of that, with the simplistic plot lines it wasn’t really that entertaining. There were only so many fight scenes in the film that were tolerable and only so much dark humor that made their mark.
Overall, Bullet to the Head just falls flat. Stallone has been off his game and should just walk away from acting at this point instead of debasing his legacy any more than he should. The writing was generic and lame. The director, Walter Hill, however, has made some great films in the past, one of them being The Warriors, which is a personal favorite. But this film was just too intolerable to handle.
