Reviewed: Bullet (DVD & Cinema release)

On the eve of his drug-lord son’s execution by lethal injection, Carlito Kane (Jonathan Banks), secretly kidnaps the Governor’s daughter in an effort to make sure a reprieve is granted. Just for good luck, the family also snatches the young grandson of maverick cop Frank ‘Bullet’ Marasco (Danny Trejo) who originally put Kane behind bars and who they will frame for the original crimes after killing the erstwhile cop and leaving a faux suicide note.

But Frank is a cop with a heart and a mission. When not taking part in off-duty cage-fights to help his single-mother ex-junkie daughter support her child, he’s a man who treads meaningfully through the dirt of the streets while looking to the stars. Now the Kane family are in his crosshairs  and he must rely on his own fighting skills as he tries to avoid the cops who may think he’s murdered his own and take on the bad guys to save the grandson who means more to him than his badge…

Danny Trejo is often a guilty pleasure to watch, a performer who has found a certain stylish niche and knows how to plays it to the hilt – an entertaining, sometimes subversive larger-then-life presence on-screen and a perfect gentlemen off.  If he’s not the star of a piece, then he’s still often the most entertaining factor casually outshining those in the foreground.

But, to be blunt, the often charismatic Trejo is better in his ten minutes of guest-star screen-time in the recent NCIS:LA episode than in the entire ninety minutes of Bullet.  This is a film where, as a reviewer, I’m desperately trying to find redeeming features to help sell an actor and distributor with much appeal and a good track record… but in this case, it’s largely in vain.

The film simplistically checks off action-movie clichés like they were infinitely-numbered projectiles from a firearm left over from the 1980s.  No lazy one-line goes unzinged, no  montage goes by without mournful piano music, no stereotypical archetype is left standing and no turn goes unstoned. This sees even Trejo  going through the most basic of motions, almost literally on ‘semi-automatic’ pilot.

Trejo delivers the bare minimum of maverick cop machismo and familiar faces such as John Savage and Breaking Bad’s Jonathan Banks look pained to even be on the set, but somehow run the gauntlet of emotions between A and WTF, with a little MMA thrown in for no reason whatsoever.

A crossfire of creaky script, cheap effects and quite horribly amateur stunt-work aside, what’s really missing here is any sense of ironic grindhouse charm beyond its title and name of character.  A post-modern Expendables knew when it was playing its fifth ace of the game and offered a wink to the camera… and it’s tempting to think this could have been marvellously entertaining if pitched as a rip-roaring parody. But Bullet misses even that target by a mile, its cast ignoring the laughably illogical story to play it utterly straight: frowning, fretting and posturing as if they were all contenders for a golden statuette (or at least a daytime Emmy) but knowing they’re slumming it.  Sadly the calibre turns out to be more on the level of the ‘peow, peow…’ dramatics of the playground. 

The IMDB describes director Nick Lyon (auteur of such classics as Zombie Apocalypse, Annihilation Earth and the even more bizarrely named Bermuda Triangle North Sea) as being:  ‘…an artist on a journey to discover the world’.  Frankly, he may need a better atlas – though  it appears he’s currently suing producer Robert Rodriguez for ultimately taking control of the project  away from him - so who’s to know if he was the one asleep at the wheel or not?

Almost like an early-warning system, the film debuts at the cinemas and heads to DVD less than a week later and it’s not hard to see why the distributors have put the smart-money on a format that will encourage the audience to lay-back, crack open a beer and desperately try invent a drinking game to see them through its running time.   On that level, it has much to offer.

In the meantime, this is truly one for only Trejo completists and those who think Steven Seagal outings are too profound… 

This is almost so bad it’s good.  But only almost. 

Bullet is in cinemas from today - released by Vertigo Films - and hits DVD  on March 10th courtesy of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment...