Movie Nation

Let’s not make too much of this, but the comic book adaptation “Bloodshot” is basically a new and improved “Universal Soldier” or “Six Million Dollar Man” variation, with a better cast, fresh effects and “upgrades.”

But throw in the fact that Sony gave away the whole damn movie in the trailers, and one is hard-pressed to come up with a reason to brave the “Outbreak” we’re living through to go see it.

Well, people who can’t wait another year for the now-postponed next “Fast/Furious” movie to get their Vin Diesel fix have their reasons. You know who you are.

Visual effects specialist turned director Dave Wilson and Diesel & Co. deliver a competently heartless action picture, a superhero movie without the tights, “Transformers” with Battle Bot Vin in the lead role.

Diesel plays a top flight commando who always gets his man, always says the hostage and always, as he tells his wife (Talulah Riley), “comes home.”

But there’s this villain (Toby Kebbell) who gets the drop on our man Ray when he and the Mrs. are on holiday on the Amalfi Coast (Italy). The bad guy tortures our hero in a meat locker, after vamping/dancing in to the Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer.” Then he kills the wife. Ray, too.

Only Ray wakes up under the care of a one-armed scientist (Guy Pearce) with a wicked twinkle in his eye. Ray’s been claimed from the Army morgue. “It was either us…or Arlington!”

Ray’s been brought back, new and augmented — super strong, nanotech in his bloodstream fixing every injury in a flash. And there’s just enough memory for Ray to want his revenge, which his RST (Rising Spirit Technology) minder cannot prevent.

But something about the casting of Pearce summons up memories of everything the trailers to “Bloodshot” give away. This Dr. Harting (Pearce) isn’t who he seems. Ray isn’t the righteous avenger he might be, something comrades who have gone through this program (Eiza González , Sam Heughan, Alex Hernandez) hint at. We know this long before Harting’s pitiless nature comes out in a single line.

“He’s a dead soldier. America makes new ones every day.”

Like all comic book movies, there’s a whiff of “Hey, we could get a FRANCHISE out of this” here. But just a whiff. The script spends a lot of time explaining the tech, showing off some dazzling effects. It’s not just the epic fights, shootouts and blood corpuscle–sized robots that require Hollywood’s finest’s attention. We have “Matrix/Inception” styled modeling and “simulations” to illustrate.

One of those, breaking down one of the most scenic places on Earth into its component shapes, colors and textures like a computerized Leonardo DaVinci, is singularly impressive and should be taught in special effects schools.

Diesel doesn’t sleepwalk through movies like this, but neither the script nor the performance give us a sense of a compelling interior life, pathos or humanity. That’s kind of built-into the character, and it hamstrings the movie.

Pearce is similarly colorless. The movie is self-aware enough to know that the dancing, torturing Kebbell scene is over-the-top and “Hollywood.” But hell, the movie NEEDS a little of that — a lot more of it, to be honest. That’s why Brit actor Lamorne Morris, as a wiseass techie, steals the movie when he shows up in the third act.

Eiza González of “Hobbs & Shaw” and “Baby Driver” is a stunning beauty who handles what action choreography they entrust to her. She knows how to suck in her cheeks as she’s about to set off grenades in the computer room like an action bombshell badass. Very Olivia Wilde.

But “Bloodshot” is a movie filled with “Yeah, and?” moments, scenes and plot points. Covering ground this familiar in an origin story puts extra pressure on character, relationships and empathetic acting. All are somewhat less than they need to be to make this one worth the price of admission.

Netflix, maybe?

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for intense sequences of violence, some suggestive material and language

Cast: Vin Diesel, Guy Pearce,Eiza González, Talulah Riley and Toby Kebbell.

Credits: Directed by Dave Wilson, script by Jeff Wadlow and Eric Heisserer, based on the comic book. A Sony release.

Running time: 1:49

April 17 VOD and streaming.

This one looks interesting and novel in approach. Pops out March 17, and I will be reviewing it shortly.

You don’t have to be drunk to appreciate the no-budget charms of “Jurassic Thunder.”

Strike that. Being drunk is pretty much a prerequisite for watching this models and DIY effects student film, streaming now.

Not a “student film?” My bad, Milko Davis and Thomas Martwick. I’ve seen a LOT of student films. Just assumed you co-directors were matriculating. Somewhere. Maybe Texas.

Anyway, “Jurassic T” — not to be confused with anything else titled “Jurassis” (characters make lame jokes about that) is based on “the Holy Grail of comic books,” or so we’re told in the almost-not-inept scene that frames the movie. That introduction is set in a comic book/cosplay gear shop, where the owner opens his “mint” copy of this comic book for a “gather round, nerds, and lemme tellya a story” opening.

This was the comic that “has it all — weaponized dinos, warlords, zombies, commandos, nukes.” Animated interstitials take us into this “world,” where African warlords are battled by a US/Russia coalition at the direction of a Donald Trump (Heath C. Heine) hologram.

He’s in “my sixteenth year in office” and he’s still insisting his people defer to the Russians.

Rather than “nuke” southern Africa, Trumpogram lets the Russians talk him into deploying “biologics” — T-Rex’s equipped with cameras and Gatling guns. But the “cosmic hair gel” serum that allows dinosaurs to romp among us is viral, and it makes zombies.

Whoopsie! Another Trumpodemic is on the loose!

The effects are gloriously cheesy — model planes and T-Rex containment crates blend with stock footage of C-130 transport planes, superimposed parachute jumps and jungle “chases” that look like “Saturday Night Live” footage of soldiers fleeing on a treadmill while mismatched footage flashes behind them.

Firefights are many, with the gun muzzle flashes added later, and on the cheap. Blood spatters are similarly drawn in after the fact.

The characters include a Col. Sanders (Jon Cotton) — Trump: “How did a guy who sells fried chicken end up running the show?”

Heine’s Trump is an impersonation of Alec Baldwin’s impersonation of Donald Trump.

And the dialogue is of the “Smooth move, Ex-Lax” caliber — juvenile and dated and almost never close to funny.

It’s terrible on every level, pretty much from comic book store to Trump-and-cast dance video finale.

But if you’ve had a few, this could be fun. Make up your own drinking games for “Jurassic Thunder” because I’m above that.

MPAA Rating: unrated, violence, dino poop

Cast: Heath C. Heine, Rick Haak, Jon Cotton, Aga Kistler, Leon Mayfield

Credits: Directed by Milko Davis and Thomas Martwick, script by Milko Davis. A High Octane release.

Running time: 1:24

Got to put that “Onward” outing in the rear view mirror, and quick.

But, as Seinfeld puts it, What is the DEAL with Pixar’s obsession with DEATH?

There’s an opinion, common in certain film fan communities on the Internet, that carries the belief that kids’ movies are too treacly, inoffensive and mild-mannered for the little darlings’ own good.

I don’t necessarily think they’re wrong. Children are exposed to a lot of words, action tropes and screen violence — via every screen in their lives — before they hit second grade. Maybe they’re more sophisticated consumers of what we used to call “adult content” than we give them credit for.

For those folks, who figure “Goonies” and kids-mixed-up-in-foul-mouthed mayhem is a touchstone, we give you “My Spy.” It’s about a child who stumbles into a C.I.A. stakeout, blackmails an embarrassed agent into befriending her and courting her mom, and is exposed to the odd shootout, killing and curse word in the process.

I can’t say it’s very good, because it isn’t. But the magnificent walking, talking, pratfall-taking sight gag that is Dave Bautista? Well cast.

Bautista is an ex-Army Ranger turned C.I.A. spy who blows his big undercover plutonium purchase in Putin-land by slinging the worst “Russian arms dealer” accent in the history of the Cold War.
“Take an ACTING class, for God’s sake!” a villain hisses, in an equally bad accent.

That’s when man-mountain J.J. does what he knows how to do — “Kick ass.”

Those bothered by such things can start the movie’s body count here. Maybe a dozen villains bite the dust. No blood, but explosions can separate one’s head from one’s body.

J.J.’s boss (Dr. Ken Jeong, not given a single funny thing to do.) isn’t happy with this outcome. He sentences J.J. to surveillance duty in Chicago, paired up with tech nerd Bobbie (Kristen Schaal). They’re watching the widow (Parisa Fitz-Henley) of a guy whose brother (Greg Bryk) is mixed up in this bomb building/buying/selling scheme.

Maybe the bad guy will turn up. Or maybe the widow’s curly-haired 9-year-old will figure out their apartment’s bugged and who did the bugging. And maybe Sophie, whose nurse-mom can’t take her to that school ice-skating party, will keep her yap shut and her video of their stakeout apartment off “the cloud” is Agent Shrek will provide “adult supervision.

And maybe the kid will push her luck, blackmailing J.J. into all sorts of kiddie activities.

Here’s what made me laugh — every time the Incredible Hulk-ista considers the ruthless, risk-free option for dealing with this three and a half foot tall threat.

“Kill her,” he suggests to google-eyed Bobbie. “Make it look like an accident. The stairs, maybe?”

Other versions of this, told to the kid’s face, end with “and they never find the body.”

J.J.’s other sure-fire laugh elements are his size — no suit fits him — and the violent line of work that’s made him tactless and unfiltered in”war stories” dinner conversation.

“By that time we were drinking our own urine…”

The kid is cute and has a light touch, by insufferable child actor standards.

The gay neighbors, played by Devere Rogers and Noah Dalton Danby? Kids are never too young to learn gay stereotypes.

“Oh my Lord & Taylor!”

But scenes where J.J. gives her spy training and lessons in how to walk slowly away from an explosion like all the cool spies do “in the movies” did nothing for me. Giving all of those away in the TV commercials and trailers doesn’t help.

So, not much here for adults. And if you’re the least bit squeamish about how old your child should be before she or he is ready for an action comedy with a body count, well you’ve been warned.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 for action/violence and language.

Cast: Dave Bautista, Chloe Coleman, Parisa Fitz-Henley, Kristen Schaal, Greg Byrk and Ken Jeong

Credits: Directed by Peter Segal, script by Erich Hoeber, Jon Hoeber. An STX release.

Running time: 1:39

The sky is falling, the virus is spreading and nicknaming the pandemic after the blundering, ignorant dunces mismanaging it doesn’t help.

So, while we still can, let us brave the Trumpdemic and see this comic book release, which the Sony braintrust chose not to preview in most markets.

I have previews lined up for the next two weeks, and I half expect those to change pretty much any minute.

Theaters are run by children, mostly, who cannot be expected to run Clorox wipes over every seat between showings.

As we will not know we’re infectious until some time after we show symptoms, best to keep one’s distance from the folks in the cinema with you.

If last weekend was any indication, with normally jammed multiplexes taking on the appearance of ghost towns, that shouldn’t be a problem.

See you at the movies!

Yeah, they moved it to April.

Might help. Might hurt this kid-and-Dave Bautista action comedy. Probably not too violent, but you never know.

Anyhoo, looks funny. Love that Dave.

There’s something inherently tone-deaf in a gory satire cooked up by Hollywood “elites” mocking liberal “elites” hunting “deplorables” for sport.

Maybe the film schooled screenwriters of “The Hunt” have a firm grasp of liberal tropes — the ones Fox News mocks morning, noon and night. There’s the PC speech.

“Don’t joke about AIDS!”

“Don’t joke about ‘CHOICE!'”

There’s the mincing “foodie” identifiers, group chatting about the “Rat-f—-r-in-chief” and “education-impaired rednecks,” looking down their “liberal Deep State elite” sculpted noses at everybody who ever wore a name tag to work.

Because they’re all about fashion.

“Is that a KIMONO? APPROPRIATION, Richard!”

So sure, “nailed it.” But “THOSE people” walk into a minefield and lose all their nerve when trying to depict those “salt of the Earth” plumbers, hairdressers, waitresses and “gun-clutching homophobes” who provide the heroes — or heroine — of their botched flipping of the “deplorable/elites” script.

The group of super-rich, super-PC “hunters” whose ranks include Amy Madigan, Jennifer Garner, Steve Coulter and Glenn Howerton are sketched in. The assorted bubbas, a veteran, a “big game hunter” and others they’re hunting aren’t so much as outlined.

The joke here is that every paranoid “Q-Anon” Alex Jones/Hannity conspiracy trotted out by the Loony Right smacks of truth when eleven victims are drugged, tossed on a plane and taken off to “The Manor” for a sport-hunt where they are “The Most Dangerous Game.”

“Manorgate” they and their kind have been calling it (“Google it !”) the replacement for “Pizzagate” and assorted other “what’s REALLY going on” schemes that Internet age gullibles buy into.

That’s why podcasting gun-nut Gary (Ethan Suplee) and “Airborne” vet Don (Wayne Duvall) blurt out “I know EXACTLY what’s going on” more than once when they throw in with our heroine “with very particular skills.” That would be Crystal, played by Betty Gilpin of TV’s “GLOW” and “A Dog’s Journey” and “Isn’t It Romantic?”

Crystal’s the one who wakes up, lock-gagged and in the woods but knowing how to make a compass out of her name-tag pin, a little friction and a leaf floating in a pond. (Shown in “The Edge,” and no — it doesn’t work, film school boys).

Most of this “deplorable” group is gruesomely shot, pierced or blown-up before they can get their bearings and figure out they’re being hunted. A couple of famous (ish) faces are in those ranks.

But Crystal is the one defies the odds, and Gilpin has a lot of fun deadpanning this smartest-prey-in-the-woods Amazon. She listens to the “I KNOW what’s happening” trigger-happy dunces like she’s been doing it her whole life. Growing up in Mississippi, that seems like a fair bet.

Don in particular is blown away by her ruthlessness, her mad killing skills and her disinterest in “theories” about what they’re in the middle of. After all, she got the drop of folks with all the weapons and the element of surprise, hunters who’d been told “Just have a little fun with her.”

“Why didn’t they just KILL you?”

“Don’t care.”

Let the others giggle about “blowing the lid off” this “conspiracy” by being “on Hannity, like them two Jew boys who got Nixon!”

Crystal is into figuring out where they are, how to arm herself and using those arms to get out. But none of the escaping “victims” had reckoned on these soft Lindsey Graham-voiced sissies having such a blood lust.

“I thought they were all vegan?”

Director Craig Zobel (“Compliance,” TV’s “One Dollar”) has things skipping past us for about 45 minutes when the script pauses for a long, stupid faux Southern anecdote. The film stops cold while we consider Gilpin’s feeble Mississippi accent, the urgency that just left their “escape” attempt and why the movie only uses “Jew boys” that once, when — thanks to the writers and the director — more “leaning into” that blind spot was in order.

Why have the “liberal elites” mince around “those people” using “the N-word.” Have a hypocrite USE it, right after “Ooo, Ava DuVernay liked my tweet!”

Mocking people who believe in “Crisis actors” is fine. Why pussyfoot around Islamophobia and xenophobia?

Why not say what conservative dog whistlers mean when they say “Hollywood elites” and “liberal elites?” #Hollywood2Jewish.

A whole “those people” debate about African Americans, based on current “NPR” usage is punctuated with a lame, “And WHO’S on NPR?” rejoinder. “WHITE people.”

“Jews” would’ve been funnier and more accurate. In Bubbaland, we’ve been known to call NPR “B’Nai Brith Broadcasting,” where you shouldn’t hold your “Brith” waiting for a non Jewish host or hostess to interview assorted experts named Cohen, Levy or Stein.

Go ahead, Blumhouse Boys — touch the third rail of Hollywood “identity politics.”

But that would’ve given this limp “satire” bite and guts, something it lacks, start to finish. The contempt is supposed to cut both ways/SEVERAL ways. And it never does. Toothless.

Sorry, did I offend? That’s kind of the point of satire. This movie has an echo chamber feel and tone and offends no one.

Pulling this gruesomely violent picture from release after one of many NRA-sponsored mass shootings just gave it a notoriety it doesn’t warrant.

And tipping its plot just gave Fox News and its ilk something to be outraged about so that they don’t have to talk about open corruption, impeachment or the “fake” pandemic.

Gilpin revels in playing tough, smart, cool and pitiless. She doesn’t register pain, fear or worry, but that’s quibbling. And knowing that “Million Dollar Baby” Oscar winner Hilary Swank is in it just sets up a “girl fight” for the ages.

Aside from that, “The Hunt” is like sitting in a deer blind (Look it up, Hollywoodies) on the wrong corner of the pasture. Pointless.

MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, and language throughout.

Cast: Betty Gilpin, Hilary Swank, Ike Barinholtz, Ethan Suplee, Emma Roberts, Amy Madigan

Credits: Directed by Craig Zobel, script by Nick Cuse, Damon Lindelof. A Blumhouse/Universal release.

Running time: 1:29

Juno Temple delivers a dazzling turn as an aspiring singer/songwriter struggling to protect and look out for the schizophrenic producer who “discovered” her in “Lost Transmissions.”

As Hannah, she turns manic with fear over what could become of Theo (Simon Pegg), a Brit trapped in his head and lost in America’s byzantine health care system and bizarre mental health Catch-22s. Hannah’s mania spins out of her intimate knowledge of Theo’s predicament. She’s among the medicated mentally ill herself. She understands what he’s going through and what he’s up against.

And like Theo, she is off her meds.

Katharine O’Brien’s “inspired by a true story” debut feature begins with a musical connection that cements a friendship and partnership, and then sets up its fundamental dilemma with just a line, delivered by one of Theo’s circle of friends.

“Don’t let him take you down the rabbit hole with him, Hannah.”

Theo is the life of parties within that circle. A successful record producer who used to belong to a band himself, he lures shy Hannah into a duet with him at the piano. He flirts with talk of initiating her into “a secret society.” He tempts the cubicle-drone Hannah with a trip to his recording studio, filled with instruments, some of which used to belong to legendary producer Phil Spector and Chaka Khan.

In a flash, he’s turned a song or two of hers, “written when I was a kid,” into dreamy synth-pop. In another flash, she’s set up to write tunes for a bleached dance pop bombshell (Alexandra Daddario) based on just that demo.

And then she makes the mistake of giving Theo a lift. He’s antic, and absorbed with the station between stations on her radio. “If you listen really carefully, you can hear the transmissions!”

He’s lost his car — literally misplaced it. He’s twitchy, jumpy and “off.”
“Are you ON something?” No. He’s “OFF” something.

Unlike Hannah, who “keeps everything level” with meds, Theo fears it muffles his brilliance and mutes his gifts.

He shouts “Listen, listen LISTEN” to her over the radio. A call to his friends earns a “Oh God, not AGAIN.” And in spite of all that, Hannah takes responsibility for her mentor and is even tempted to try life without medication as a jolt for her “inspiration.”

O’Brien gives Pegg scenes to show Theo’s laser focus at the mixing board as he works his mixing magic with a band. Theo is stone-faced and in-the-zone. But we can feel what’s coming. We’ve seen the hair-trigger temper, heard the unfiltered “truth” he can blurt out, giving away the crazy.

Temple, a screen veteran (“Atonement,” “Black Mass,” “Wonder Wheel”) who too-rarely lands a lead, is heartbreaking when Hannah is frantically trying to keep Theo out of harm’s way — involuntarily institutionalized for “observation,” confronting police, acting-out on a drive to the mental hospital.

She’s funny when Hannah drops her meds and starts acting out — Theo style — in her “sellout” scenes with Daddario, who is spot on as the gorgeous, nail-biting egomaniac who needs Hannah’s talent to pretend she has some of her own.

Pegg is the very picture of schizophrenia — funny and charming, here and there, lucid when he can get it together to lie to a doctor, bug-eyed and furious when Theo’s independence is threatened and his view that “time” is being controlled…by somebody — isn’t taken seriously.

O’Brien even gives us a homeless “prophet” tirade to show how common this temporal mania is among the mentally ill. Theo wears watches all over his arms and ankles.

O’Brien and her players take a common creative community belief — that “maybe the insanity makes (unusual) neuro-connections in his brain” that renders the brilliantly unbalanced brilliant — and have made a superficial but grimly realistic and thoroughly engrossing movie gloss of that theory.

And Temple has reminded us that she’s better than all those bit parts as tarts, “broads” and the like, a leading lady of formidable empathy and range. Hell, she even sings.

MPAA rating: unrated, drug abuse, profanity, violence.

Cast: Juno Temple, Simon Pegg, Alexandra Daddario

Credits: Written and directed by Katharine O’Brien. A Gravitas Ventures release.

Running time: 1:45