Bullet to the Head

Walter Hill – 2013 – USA

Walter Hill’s first feature in over ten years, (since 2002’s Undisputed), Bullet to the Head is a strange anomaly; a film that feels like a young man’s work but also a summation of the 71-year-old director’s filmography.  In a sense, Hill is needed now more than ever, in an age when frantically edited action movies clog theaters and TV.  The weakness of those films supports the theory that action movies are inherently frivolous and artless.  Hill, however, like John Carpenter, has always adhered to a minimalist philosophy, resulting in hard-boiled 90-odd-minute genre films that satisfy equally as cinema and as entertainment.  Simply put: despite whatever silliness or clichés that rush at us during Bullet to the Head, it is such a relief to see something that isn’t monotonous, affected and dripping with style.  It’s the kind of film that in an ideal world would be the rule rather than the exception because while retaining its modernity it also registers its long legacy of tough, concise Hollywood action films such as those by Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks and Anthony Mann.  Only a few years younger than his director, Sylvester Stallone stars as James Bonomo, a small-time but proficient hit-man whose partner is betrayed and killed after a job, sparking a vendetta on Bonomo’s part to find the men responsible.  Hill wastes no time glorifying nor condemning Bonomo’s profession; Hill, Bonomo and we all seem to agree at the outset that, like most movie hoodlums, Bonomo is a bad man who also operates according to some sort of ethical code that elevates him just slightly above some of the inhuman criminals with whom he has to rub shoulders.  One of these is played memorably nastily by Jason Momoa; Keegan, a mercenary and sadist who is imposing enough to present a genuine threat to Bonomo.  More than its effective action scenes and New Orleans locale, though, what really made the film work for me was its sense of humor and humanity that are not forced and driven by one-liners as in most action flicks but revolve more around character and performances.  Sung Kang plays an uptight detective who reluctantly teams up with Bonomo on his mission, and their relationship is comically strained simply because of their philosophical, cultural and generational differences; it’s not conveyed through nonstop inane bickering as in most buddy action movies.  Bullet to the Head may not be vying for the Nobel Prize, but its nimble modesty struck me as both welcome and compelling.  I can only hope that Hill does not wait another decade to make his next film.