Bullet to the Head (15)

Time Out says

Wed Nov 30 2011

With its 66-year-old star and 71-year-old director, it’s perhaps no surprise this buddy-cop flick bringing together Sly Stallone and Walter Hill should feel just a bit old. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, since Hill’s 1982 classic ‘48 Hrs’ remains the best example of the genre, but this collection of clichés represents the point where a formula is so congealed that the makers try to pretend it’s iconic. So there’s a murdered pal, vengeance for Sly’s old-school operator, an ill-matched new Korean cop helping/hindering, a musclebound henchman and so on. We’ve seen it many times, but rarely with a crooked property-scam plotline as dull as this. Sly handles the one-liners with zen mastery and acquits himself decently in the rumbles, but he’s playing a poster version of himself rather than a real character, and it’s hard to feel that invested – not least when co-star Sung Kang is such a lightweight foil. 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.

Author: Trevor Johnston