Bullet to the Head Review: Old School Action

 That's how you use watered down Jason Momoa right

Bullet to the Head 2012 is the first Sylvester Stallone film i saw since The Expendables 2. The main players here are Christian Slater as the corrupt banker, Jason Momoa as Stallone's adversary, Sung Kang (from the Fast and the Furious Franchise) playing Stallone’s annoying and unlikely sidekick and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as the cripple, corrupt businessman.
Bullet to the Head featuring Stallone and Momoa
Bullet to the Head Movie Poster

Bullet to the Head told the story of a local small criminal James Bonomo (Sylvester Stallone), as the years passed Stallone's character got a lot smarter and climbed to the status of a hitman who made a name for himself in the criminal world. Things start to fall apart for our hero after he and his partner Louis (Jon Seda) are double crossed, Luis gets killed and Sly uses his instincts to survive the hit. Than out of nowhere Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang) shows up to help Stallone find the responsible for Luis’s death and on the way catch the guy who ordered a hit on his corrupt cop who used to be his partner. The most entertaining part of the film was the interaction between Stallone and Kang’s characters. The two represented the complete opposites of each other in every way possible and still found somehow a functional way to co-exist and even work as a team towards the end, even the Asian jokes didn't sound that offensive but were brilliantly used to brake the hidden tension between the characters. During the never ending hunt for Keegan (Jason Momoa) the unlikely duo attend a naked girls and old men party, get to beat up Bonomo's handler, kidnap and tortured Christian Slater and let us know better Bonomo's tattooed daughter Lisa (Sarah Shahi) who is apparently a nurse and doctor in her spare time.


The final fight scene between Stallone and Momoa was surprisingly well done. Initially when I saw the axes came to play I thought OK that is going to be ... "interesting" but Stallone’s "What are we Vikings now" joke somehow broke the ice and made this scene look less ridicules that it initially appeared to be.

Bullet to the Head (2012)
Bullet to the Head (2012) (Photo credit: Film_Poster)

I will mention something else I liked in Bullet to the Head. Sylvester Stallone and Jason Momoa are not great actors, the truth is far from it. Stallone can sell a movie using his name alone so his current acting skills are not of relevance. Jason Momoa on the other hand doesn’t have the privilege of having a blockbuster movie selling name or the acting skills to back him up headlining a major blockbuster as we witnessed with Conan the Barbarian. Walter Hill (the director) knew that. You could see that Hill knew how to use Momoa in the most efficient way possible. Hill cut on Momoa's lines or just kept his acting to the minimum. He focused on Momoa's positives; he used his well build physic and made him look intense and angry throughout the majority of movie. It worked great in Season 1 of Game of Thrones, it was Momoa's most rememberable role so far in his career and he spoke 1-2 words in English there. So why wouldn’t it work in Bullet to the Head. Surprise surprise and be hold it actually did work, the waterdown process of Jason Momoa was actually done in the right way, which actually helped the Bullet to the Head movie look less frustrating and agitating from the audience point of view.


Bullet to the head was an average Old School Action film nothing more and nothing less. It had its highs and it had its lows. The movie was balanced enough to keep me interested through the entire thing and I didn’t get bored through majority of its viewing experience. Bullet to the Head can be definitely classified as a Cool Movie to pass up a spare hour and a half of your time. Don’t expect it to be a modern day action master piece because it’s not, just prepare to have a flashback to the 80's-90's old school Action genre and have some fun with it, no doubt you will enjoy the Bullet to the Head Movie experience.

Bullet to the Head DVD Blu ray link

Bullet To The Head (Blu-ray+DVD+UltraViolet Combo Pack) 

Photo credit: mike_mccormick / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA




About Sasha Shapiro

Sasha is the founder and editor of Cool Reviews Rule. He is very passionate about Movies, TV Shows and some Books. His favorite genres are: Action, Fantasy, History, Horror, Sci-fi and Adventure.
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2 comments:

  1. Great review. I always try to catch anything that Stallone is in, because he's so odd.

    ReplyDelete