Can we talk about Jason Momoa for a minute? I know he’s not the star of Bullet to the Head, or even featured all that much in the marketing, which seems to center on the belief that Sylvester Stallone’s terrifyingly ripped 65-year-old torso is a good sell.
In this garish, borderline incomprehensible action drama, Momoa plays the stock bad guy, a hulk hired by some crooked cops and politicians to cover up their misdeeds, usually by indiscriminately killing anyone who might be a threat.
Momoa probably has the worst role in the film and does the most with it, exuding both charisma and intimidation in a way that makes him the center of every scene. If it is remembered for anything, hopefully, Bullet to the Head will mark Momoa’s ascendance as the new The Rock — a bruiser with surprising screen presence.
I’m not saying something nice because I feel particularly generous toward Bullet to the Head, but because I’m not sure what else to tell you about it that you don’t already know. It’s yet another movie in which Sylvester Stallone jokes about his age, then proceeds to dispatch bad guys 30 years younger.
It’s an excuse to show off a lot of guns and a lot of bloody deaths, as you’d guess from the title, and revolves around a political conspiracy plot riddled with plot holes so confounding you can’t even start to dig into them.
It teams up Stallone with Korean action star Sung Kang, only to have Stallone make endless jokes about Asian stereotypes, to which Kang never really responds because, hey, Sly is the star. The best thing about the film, aside from Momoa, is showcase New Orleans but rename it Crescent City, presumably to save it the embarrassment.
The film begins with Stallone’s character Jimmy Bobo and his contract killer partner Louis (Jon Seda) taking down a target in a hotel room. But the film really only gets started when Louis is dispatched by Momoa’s Keegan, an assassination mysteriously intercut with a live band performing in the bar.
The moment Jimmy tells Louis to head upriver and visit his mom, you know Louis is a goner, but Jimmy takes it hard anyway, determined to find his killers and exact his revenge.
That’s essentially the goal of Kang’s cop character, Taylor Kwon, sent down from D.C. to investigate the guy Louis and Jimmy killed, and inadvertently unraveling the giant political conspiracy, which is generally nonsense but does give Christian Slater a brief appearance as one of the rich blowhards who runs the town…
Read More: cinemablend.com
