Bullet to the Head. Essentially a b-movie action movie. James Bonomo (Sylvester Stallone) is a New Orleans hitman. He and his partner take out an ex-police officer, Hank Greely (Holt McCallany). Soon after, Bonomo's partner is killed by another hitman. A Washington DC detective named Taylor Kwon (Sung Kang) shows up on the scene to investigate the death of his former partner, Hank Greely. Kwon makes a connection between the deaths of Greely and Bonomo's partner. He finds Bonomo. Even though Kwon knows Bonomo is guilty of murder, they eventually form an uneasy alliance as they try to discover who is actually pulling the strings.
This movie is a little too complex for its own good. There are four layers (or more depending on how you count) that Bonomo and Kwon must pull apart to finally get to their man: the ex-police officer leads to a lawyer and a middle man that eventually leads to another hitman, which eventually leads to the string puller. The order of all this can be debated. There is also a local mobster involved as well as some corrupt New Orleans cops. One almost feels like they need an organizational chart to track all the people written into the story.
Maybe this would all work if it was turned into the 3 season/12 episode HBO series, but with characters just thrown at you all at once it is a little difficult to keep track of things. Or maybe the movie should have gone over 2 hours versus going just 1.5 hours.
The action scenes are set up in a way that you know there was a relatively tight budget applied to the film. Just taking a look at some data on various websites: Bullet to the Head was made for $55 million while 300: Rise of An Empire cost $110 million.
Final assessment: the movie is watchable when one is in a b-movie state of mind.
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