As the trailers might have you believe, Bullet To The Head is a throw back to the mis-matched partner cop movies of the 1980’s. You know how much we loved those, right? Chock full of action and hilarity. But that usually relied on both the partners being interesting in their own way. When one of them doesn’t own up to their responsibility, well, then the movie gets pretty boring pretty fast. And so we have Bullet To The Head.
As the trailers might have you believe, Bullet To The Head is a throw back to the mis-matched partner cop movies of the 1980’s. You know how much we loved those, right? Chock full of action and hilarity. But that usually relied on both the partners being interesting in their own way. When one of them doesn’t own up to their responsibility, well, then the movie gets pretty boring pretty fast. And so we have Bullet To The Head.
Sylvester Stallone plays Jimmy Bonomo, aka Jimmy Bobo. No, he’s not a clown or a monkey. He’s a hitman living in New Orleans and his partner gets killed after they do a job. Turns out the guy they killed is the ex-partner of Washington D.C. detective Taylor Kwon, played buy Sung Kang. This connects Bobo and Kwon because somewhere in there is a guy that is a common enemy. So they team up, apparently so they can exchange insults about race or age.
Sure, that’s pretty much how they did things in those 80’s cop films, but they were funnier then. Not so much here. And as I said, both of your characters should be interesting. Stallone is the old hitman who is full of gruff and old school ways – shoot to kill, no point in diplomacy. Yeah, he’s the bad cop in the “good cop/bad cop” scenario. He does well here, but hey, Stallone is no stranger to this genre, seeing as he did it often in the 80’s. His counterpart however, Sung Kang, most notable in the U.S. from the Fast and Furious films, is not a good straight man to Stallone’s color character. He’s boring, and his range is limited. He makes everything Stallone says fall flat.
These two guys end up together trying to take down a guy looking to buy up all the slums, kicking out the residents, and building…condominiums! Now that’s a dream come true for a moustache-twirling villian for sure! His number one henchman is hired mercenary Keegan, played by Jason Momoa. He was in Stargate: Atlantis and more recently in that Conan movie remake. He’s big, formidable, and looks like he could beat the crap out of the much shorter Stallone, even thoguh Sly is as muscle-bound as ever with his veins popping out of his arms…looks kinda creepy, but he looks good for a guy of 66 or so years old. I should look so creepy. And of course, these guys duke it out, where? A big old warehouse. Just like they used to back in the good ol’days!
Bullet To The Head is directed by none other than Walter Hill, the man that gave us 48 Hours, The Warriors, Red Heat, and Last Man Standing. Talk about a guy that knows this genre. All the cliche’s are there, like Bobo’s daughter being a tattooist, and happens to be a med school dropout that can remove a bullet from a guys shoulder if needed. At least she’s played buy the super gorgeous Sarah Shahi. Unfortunately, she’s barely more than window dressing here. A total waste of a talented actress. Is it me, or have Hill’s movies gotten worse over the years. He starts with stuff like The Warriors and Streets of Fire, and ends up with movies like Supernova and Undisputed. Yeah, Bullet to the Head doesn’t do him any favors, either.
Ultimately, Bullet to the Head has a few good moments, one of which is with Christian Slater playing a rich drunken patsy who smartly realizes he has nothing to gain by keeping quiet, especially when Stallone’s Bobo is inches away with a pair of pliers in his hand. But depsite that, this movie is simply not very interesting. It’s terribly average, and that’s giving it leeway. Without Stallone, this would be truly bad. Two Kittenhands out of five. Surprise, surprise.
~ Neil T. Weakley, your average movie-goer, half a kittenhand was just because Stallone was pretty good.