{"id":4558,"date":"2013-02-02T12:12:44","date_gmt":"2013-02-02T20:12:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cinemastance.com\/?p=4558"},"modified":"2013-02-02T12:12:44","modified_gmt":"2013-02-02T20:12:44","slug":"nostalgia-fuels-stallone-through-bullet-to-the-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/?p=4558","title":{"rendered":"Nostalgia Fuels Stallone through BULLET TO THE HEAD"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A1\"<\/a>
\n\"24_0008_B-(merged)\"<\/a>
\nWelcome to 2013, a year filled with old school shoot\u2019em-ups starring geriatric Action Icons from the past. The pace of these releases is nearly bi-weekly. First we had Arnold\u2019s return to form in \u201cThe Last Stand\u201d which will soon be followed by Bruce\u2019s 5th<\/sup> outing as John McClane in \u201cA Good Day to Die Hard\u201d on February 14th<\/sup>. I can\u2019t wait to see what Steven Segal has in store for us. Whatever it is, I hope it\u2019s called \u201cHard to Kick\u201d because I\u2019m sure he can barely get that leg higher than his waist any longer.<\/p>\n

Now with the \u201cBullet to the Head,\u201d Sylvester Stallone is back (again) and this time it\u2019s personal (sorta). He has teamed up with director Walter Hill, another Icon from the Action Glory Days (\u201cThe Warriors,\u201d \u201c48 Hrs,\u201d \u201cLast Man Standing\u201d) who hasn\u2019t made a decent movie in decades. Together Hill and Stallone give us a movie that looks, sounds and feels like it came from another era. Corrupt cops, rock-hard hit men and gorgeous women who can\u2019t seem to keep clothed populate this throwback that makes no excuses for its ridiculousness. The film could have easily been made in 1985, shot-for-shot and word-for-word, and been a legitimate example of the genre.<\/p>\n

Now personally, as a 37 year-old who owns Stallone\u2019s arm wrestling classic \u201cOver the Top\u201d on Blu-ray, nostalgia was enough to keep me entertained through most of \u201cBullet to the Head\u201d. Fans of this sort of thing should not be disappointed. Sly plays James Bonomo (Bobo for short), a hit man with a conscience who will avenge his partner\u2019s murder by placing many bullets into craniums out in the savage streets of beautiful New Orleans. He reluctantly pairs up with a cop (Sung Kang) who is investigating the murder of a crooked ex-police officer that was gunned down on the same night that James lost his partner to inconvenient knife holes to the chest.
\n\"a2\"<\/a>
\nChristian Slater plays an asshole attorney working for the bad guy. Jason Momoa (the revamped \u201cConan the Barbarian\u201d) provides the proper scowl as Keegan, the modern day Drago, the main villain who provides a wonderful finale involving swinging axes. Women do not fare well as they are only portrayed as victims and eye-candy.<\/p>\n

But is it too late for this sort of shenanigans? The fact that all of these Action films starring men edging on 70 years has brought a couple of things to light for me. First, we never replaced these guys and there is probably a good reason for that. You could make an argument for Jason Statham as the Last Action Hero we\u2019ve had but his films have never been broadly beloved the way Rambo flicks were 30 years ago. Second, I don\u2019t think these new films have much to offer but nostalgia. \u201cThe Last Stand\u201d was a decent movie that stayed close to the template much like \u201cBullet to the Head\u201d does. As the guns really got to blazing in the third act, it was hard not to realize how long it had been since I had seen a movie that relied so heavily on gunfire to replace any actual storytelling. I liked the film but it was my inner-eight year old that was clapping and bouncing for joy. \u00a0Considering that \u201cThe Last Stand\u201d has bombed at the box office may illustrate that this sort of thing is outdated and the modern filmgoer, as fickle as he\/she can be, actually will not swallow this as entertainment any longer.\u00a0 Let\u2019s see if Stallone can do any better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Welcome to 2013, a year filled with old school shoot\u2019em-ups starring geriatric Action Icons from the past. The pace of these releases is nearly bi-weekly. First we had Arnold\u2019s return to form in \u201cThe Last Stand\u201d which will soon be followed by Bruce\u2019s 5th outing as John McClane in \u201cA Good Day to Die Hard\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4562,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[700,3665,4340,19478,23946],"class_list":["post-4558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-action-films","tag-bullet-to-the-head-movie","tag-christian-slater","tag-sylvester-stallone","tag-walter-hill"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cinemastance.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}