Bullet to the Head Reviews
Top CriticHill's eye for back alley scuzz is as strong as ever, but the story, adapted from a French graphic novel by Alexis Nolent, is so die-cut it gives neither him nor Stallone anything to work with.
On its own degenerate terms, the movie works.
It's a series of fight scenes that build to a climax that is surprisingly unsatisfying in the way it ultimately plays out.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Sylvester Stallone shoots people in the face. That's it for subtext in this formula action swill. Why do I sound like I should expect more. Because the credits list the director as Walter Hill.
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| Original Score: 1/4
Bullet to the Head doesn't try to adapt its star to 2013. It just pretends that we're still living in 1986. And for 91 minutes, it just about works.
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| Original Score: B
Stallone can still be entertaining, but here he's got no character to play, nothing fun to say, and the craziest hair/hairpiece/scalp growth this side of John Travolta.
The Geritol action genre lumbers on in the lackluster "Bullet to the Head," starring Sylvester Stallone, or at least a beef jerky replica.
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| Original Score: 1/4
In "Bullet to the Head" violence is abrupt, shattering and consequential. It's not for laughs. It's graphic and unsettling, and it makes us feel uneasy, as we should, about the world the characters inhabit.
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| Original Score: 3/4
All sorts of blockheaded action thrillers rolled into one, with occasional mentions of "flash drives" so you know it's not actually a script from 1986.
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| Original Score: D-
Plays like such a floundering exercise in macho overcompensation that you almost feel sorry for it. Almost.
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| Original Score: 1/4
"Bullet to the Head" is an adrenaline shot to your movie memory if the blunt, gleefully dumb, no-nonsense ways of '80s-style action flicks are your nostalgia drug of choice.
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| Original Score: 3/5
By the end I could have used a Bulleit to the mouth.
[Its] sole redeeming quality is that it ends. Eventually.
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| Original Score: 1/4
No one here seems to notice that there's not much going on, including Mr. Stallone, which somehow makes it easier to watch.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
The plot fails to deliver a single surprise ... and the characterizations are thin even by the standards of the tough-guy genre.
The magic is in the details, from the little surprises to the colorful casting.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Bullet to the Head indicates that we're rapidly approaching an era of big-bang movies with stars on mobility scooters.
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| Original Score: 2/4
It's just director Walter Hill tweaking his formula from the "48 Hrs." franchise.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Cut together like a beer commercial on poorly lit cheap video without much panache.
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| Original Score: C-
Yup, it's Sylvester Stallone, back for another round as an aging action-movie star.
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| Original Score: 2/5
An unapologetic rock 'em, sock 'em rumble of exploding squibs and bourbon bottles, the film could just as easily have been titled "Guns, Boobs and Booze."
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| Original Score: 3/5
If it doesn't exactly break new ground, Bullet to the Head reminds you of the pleasures of a genre that today is exploited primarily for comedy or satire.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
Fans of generic genre action will get their money's worth.
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| Original Score: 2/4
The style here - hairline-to-chin close-ups, nervous, jacked-up editing - isn't Hill at his best. But the movie has a certain grungy panache ...
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
This is the kind of brainless action movie Sylvester Stallone would have starred in circa 1985. That it stars a Stallone who's closer to 70 than 60 is just ... weird.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Stallone looks great (even if his face doesn't quite move when he talks), while Hill brings lean economy to the film's bloody, unapologetic mayhem.
Residual affection for the talent and a certain '80s nostalgia will make this amenable to some, but, in all honesty, it's not up to much.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
To claim the dialogue is written to comfort the narratively challenged would be mere quibbling, as the pic's chief pleasure lies in its store of funny lines, which Stallone tosses off with genuine brio.
A hard-hitting exercise in beefy, brainless fun...
