Bullet

Bullet is apparently an action thriller, but it may as well have just been re-advertised and refashioned into a comedy. That statement is not meant in jest because surely the film is aware of its corny, comic side – it has to be, no?

Danny Trejo is the cool, stoic old-timer, who plays the veteran cop Frank “Bullet” Marasco whose grandson is held hostage as a makeweight by the cold-blooded notorious drug lord Carlito Kane (played by Jonathan Banks), in an attempt to try to get his own son off death row. In this sense, Bullet is like your typical Western with your bad guys and your good guys; those on the right side of the law and those on the wrong side. Consequently, Marasco faces the dilemma of choosing to be a good cop but also needing to do what is right by his family and save his grandson. In this sense, Bullet is a film for the old-timers, the veterans, the grandfathers, and in this role Trejo excels. He is at one turn a lumbering old man and at another a swift, agile indestructible fighter, able to take down whatever crosses his path. Along with Trejo, Banks (known more recently for starring in Breaking Bad), puts in a fairly good performance as a convincing bad guy.

On the flip side to all of this is that some of the acting, and not to mention some of the dialogue in Bullet, is hilariously bad. This issue is also compounded by some unnecessary scenes that make the plot hazy and develop in rather schizophrenic turns. Maybe Bullet is not operating within the realm of pastiche and parody, and does not actually intend to be as funny as it is at points. It depends how much you buy into the humour of it, and to sum it up simply – Bullet is a film with a few laughs thrown in among some fairly intense and drawn-out action scenes. It is cheap in its gore and in its humour, but surely the film is deliberately so?

Thoralf Karlsen

Bullet is released nationwide on 7^th March 2014.

Watch the trailer for Bullet here: