Vintage Vin on fire in Bloodshot

Bloodshot (M, 109 mins) Directed by David Wilson Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett

Every generation produces its own stable of action stars. I was lucky enough to grow up in the glow of the holy trinity of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis, a time that, given the fragmentation of our media platforms, will surely never be repeated.

But just beneath the big three on the totem pole of ass-kickery and box-office reliability was the appalling Steven Seagal and the likeable and often underrated JeanClaude Van Damme.

Van Damme’s biggest hit – debatably – was a cheerfully nonsensical load of rubbish called Universal Soldier, in which he and Dolph Lundgren were soldiers who had been killed in action, reanimated with futuristic technology, to carry out nefarious missions under the cover of being, err, dead.

Universal Soldier was a shameless assemblage of ideas nicked from all over the shop. But it was put together – by director Roland Emmerich, making his North American debut – with exactly enough wit, pace and selfawareness to become a box-office smash in 1992, and a cult movie to this day.

I mention all this for two reasons: Firstly, Van Damme is still working. His 2019 release The Bouncer (or Lukas) is a flat-out gem of a film you really should seek out and watch, if you care enough about the old walnut cracker to have read this far.

And secondly, I have just finished watching Mrs Diesel’s boy Vin in Bloodshot. And it occurs to me that if you were ever a fan of Van Damme and Universal Soldier, then you will understand exactly why I quite liked Bloodshot as well.

Bloodshot stars Diesel as the special forces superstar who gets himself shot dead in the film’s opening stanza. Much to his surprise, Diesel’s Ray Garrison wakes up in a lab.

And, in no time at all, he’s back in the field and hunting down the men who murdered him – and his wife – only days earlier.

Well, not quite. The twist in Bloodshot is that none of this might be real. Ray may just be an unwitting pawn, driven to kill by false memories, implanted by the oleaginous Aussie Guy Pearce, here playing the requisite goodiewho-turns-out-to-be-a-baddie.

Listen, I’m not here to tell you

Bloodshot is going to turn up on anyone’s Best Films of 2020 list. But it is a slicker, better written and more enjoyable waste of a morning than I was expecting. Diesel is less obnoxious here than he has been in years, and the support cast are all fine. Eiza Gonzalez (Baby Driver )is a stand-out.

The ideas that drive Bloodshot could have been pushed a lot further. The film almost gets into Inception-style territory, only to pull back when it was threatening to be quite interesting.

But, as an old-school actioner that reminded me of the genre’s golden age, you could do worse than this comic book spin-off.