Guy Pearce – Action Hero Movies

The first 10 minutes are a mix of plot-building drama with mild humour, and a couple minutes of irritating anti-Islamic conditioning. We also get a nice little action scene where Robert Downey Jr shows off some of his Wing Chun skill, before putting on his latest Iron Man suit at super high speed.

The plot takes some refreshing twist within the first hour, and although it dries up a bit in the second hour, the action is generally decent throughout – there are some really strong scenes from time to time, and plenty more mediocre. There’s also several instances of good humour in this movie. So I have to say it outperforms Iron Man 2 (2010) as well as The Avengers (2012) where Iron Man was one of the main characters and pretty much stole that rather muddled show. But Iron Man 3 is not quite as original or awesome as the original Iron Man 1 from 2008 of course, so ultimately I rate Iron Man 3 as just Above Average for an action hero movie – just one step down from the original which I rated as Decent. With a bit more of a smooth & comfortable, confident vibe, and a bit less scary, depressing and irritating, I would have rated this movie equal to the original. It would have been nice to see at least one of the women being kind of happy but every single one of them is a tormented soul – especially Iron Man’s woman Pepper Potts played by Gwyneth Paltrow who is literally tortured throughout this movie. It’s not meant to be a horror movie, it’s meant to be a cool action hero movie, but what do you expect from Hollywood – they’re addicted to horror and usually find a way to make it ruin an otherwise pretty cool movie.

Guy Pearce plays the main villain in this movie, called Aldrich Killian. He does a decent job of it.

Ben Kingsley plays the villain early on – a terrorist called The Mandarin who’s really just an actor called Trevor Slattery who didn’t think anyone was being hurt. His acting was excellent here.

Don Cheadle also returns as a core character, Tony Stark’s old friend Colonel James Rhodes who has his own suit and calls himself Iron Patriot – formerly called War Machine. He does an alright job here.

Iron Man 3 is eventually rounded off with a strong dose of conditioning against those who preach caution toward technological advancement. I’d guess this plus the anti-Islamic conditioning earlier on were probably what got this movie sponsored.

Bloodshot is a novel concept – creative and action packed – great for anyone who’s never seen it before. It is a bit one dimensional still though. The introduction of the hacker is a nice plot development but aside from that it’s all very simple.

Vin Diesel is his usual self – a fairly entertaining action hero, but a bit dryer and slower than my favourite action movie stars, although he oozes energy from underneath the surface. This role doesn’t perfectly suit him, but he does pretty well in it nevertheless.

Supporting cast includes Eiza González, the lead female – she does quite well in her role as an attractive assassin being controlled by Guy Pearce’s character. Lamorne Morris does quite well as the coding whiz who hacks the controlling technology to set Vin’s and Eiza’s characters free.

Guy Pearce does alright as the main nemesis on the brains side – the guy who controls Vin Diesel’s character until he breaks free – but he is a bit too meek in demeanour for such a power hungry role – a naturally stronger character here could have made this is more convincing movie.

Sam Heughan does a good job as the main nemesis on the (tech assisted) muscles side – he has a very convincing attitude for the role.

Alex Hernandez also does alright as one of the main team members. Good attitude for the requirement of the role.

Toby Kebbell also does quite well, as the first victim of the mind-controlled main character played by Vin Diesel. He displays an impressive contrast of acting styles here, from a savage psycho killer with a screw-loose wacky side, to an innocent and vulnerable victim with strong understanding and quick reactions.

Talulah Riley plays Vin Diesel’s wife – her performance was fair enough, although it was a bit washed & wafery – a more attractive & powerful woman like Eiza González could have done a better job in this role and helped make the movie more convincing since the plot is so heavily based on Vin Diesel’s character being so attached to his wife and so moved and vengeance-seeking when she’s killed.

Overall it’s a busy action packed movie and quite creative in its core concept, but is a bit one dimensional in terms of extended plot detail. It’s especially interesting for those who haven’t seen it before or in many years. Due to the strong special effects, fairly rich action, generally decent cast, and quirky concept, but with a dodgy nanite theme in-keeping with so many movies released around 2020; I rate Bloodshot about equal to its rival Hobbs & Shaw, or Black Panther 1 and 2. Indeed it’s disappointing to see so much pushing of the idea that technology in our body is a beneficial and even cool thing, especially when it comes to nanobots messing around in our blood according to their own discretion or an outside controller. Bloodshot is an awesome movie the first time you see it, if you can forgive its dodgy theme features, but significant tedium sets in and significant flaws become much more apparent if you rewatch it too often.