Last’s night’s sleazy little b-movie you would expect to have a no-name cast but which oddly doesn’t on Netflix Streaming: BULLET HEAD (2017).
A trio of unarmed safecrackers on the run from a citywide manhunt hole up in a labyrinthine and decaying warehouse, only to find themselves being hunted by that warehouse’s other resident: a mastiff rendered murderous by a dog-fighting ring.
Now, you think you know what you’re going to get here. A low budget. A dingy indoor set the moviemakers repurposed from industrial infrastructure. Lots of creeping through dark spaces, to try to get past the dogs. Lots of profane exchanges. Temporary safety as the dog is locked out of places, sudden carnage as the dog finds its way into places. Discussion of how this was supposed to be the one last job, and now look at how badly they’re all fucked.
What you do not expect is for the film to have a cast made up of Oscar bait, and soliloquys.
The gang is made up of Adrien Brody as the relatively young crook who just wants to get back to his girlfriend, John Malkovich as the grizzled old veteran, and Rory Culkin, as the screwup kid with the bad heroin cravings. Plus there’s a villain, seen at the beginning but active at the end, played by Antonio Banderas. And I must tell you that though there are a number of chases involving the dog, the most interesting of which involves school buses and a piano, and though the climax brings in a murderous Banderas, the movie really does see itself as a contemplation of this life in which the criminals find themselves, and there are breaks in the action in which every single one of them gets to tell a lengthy anecdote from their respective pasts, in which their life choices and their fate is prefigured by how they once interacted with a dog. The Malkovich and Brody stories alone are worth the price of admission.
So what you have here is that oddest of all hybrids, the nasty little direct-to-video cheap but high-concept thriller, and the actor’s showcase (which is likely how the makers got a cast of this caliber to sign up not just out of financial necessity, but also with some enthusiasm).
Trigger warnings for bad shit happening to dogs. The mastiff’s brutal past in the ring is evoked, and the disposal of dogs who have died or been put down is shown. The movie knows that this dog is a tragic figure, and I know this is full of Nope for many of you.
Not a great film. Call it a dirty little thriller that would not be worth much if it didn’t have those intervals of greatness in it.
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