A film a few pair of unlikely pals teaming as much as infiltrate a cult is at all times going to relaxation on two issues: the chums having chemistry and the cult being interesting. You’d actually desire to have each of these parts working for you, however a filmmaker can get by so long as certainly one of them is powerful. Sadly for everybody concerned, “God Is a Bullet” has neither.
Nick Cassavetes’ adaptation of Boston Teran’s novel of the identical identify is an bold mess that options wild highs (a snake doing meth!) and impossibly uninteresting lows (most the whole lot else). Overly lengthy and gratuitously violent, the bloated revenge thriller appears obsessive about reminding us of how a lot evil is on this planet with out displaying the slightest little bit of curiosity in explaining the way it acquired there.
The one factor everybody in Detective Bob Hightower’s (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) life can agree on is that he’s not significantly helpful. His colleagues on the police division may respect his work ethic, however they in the end dismiss him as a “desk cowboy” and a “seat hotter” who shouldn’t be trusted with any actual instances. His ex-wife and her new husband ridicule him and largely maintain him out of his teenage daughter’s life. The one issues going for him are his deep religion in God and his perception that dangerous issues don’t occur in his small Christian city.
The latter perception is shattered — and the previous severely examined — when he goes to go to his daughter Gabi (Chloe Man) on Christmas morning and finds the home ransacked with a number of useless our bodies left inside. His ex-wife is useless, and his daughter is nowhere to be discovered. Satisfied that the absence of a physique signifies that Gabi is alive someplace, he opts to throw each police useful resource he has at discovering the blokes who took her.
His analysis leads him to Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), a reformed drug addict who escaped a cult of tattooed baby traffickers who kidnapped Gabi. Her off-the-record testimony confirms that all the proof left on the home factors to them, however Bob’s supervisor John Lee (Paul Johansson) prohibits him from investigating the case in a proper method. When Case exhibits up at his doorstep and says that the one approach to discover Gabi is to work exterior the legislation, he agrees to cross over to the darkish aspect and hit the highway together with her. Case is as blunt and cynical is Bob is reserved, however the odd couple decides to deliver his daughter again or die attempting.
She introduces him to a shady dealmaker identified solely as The Ferryman (Jamie Foxx), an influence dealer with vitiligo who hooks the strait-laced cop up with the faux ID and tattoos that he’ll have to infiltrate a Satanic loss of life cult. The encounter offers us our first actual take a look at most important impediment that would impede this rescue mission: these motherfuckers are scary. However whereas we spend loads of time exploring the cult’s sadistic tendencies and sophisticated tattoos, there’s by no means sufficient mythology to justify how lengthy we spend watching Bob and Case’s meandering journey into the center of the group. Evil for evil’s sake solely will get you to this point.
Regardless of a premise that would have been ripped from a generic Liam Neeson car, the film retains drifting into wannabe Nicholas Winding Refn territory and forcing us to sit down by means of infinite scenes of unhappy individuals chilling in neon-tinged bars with evil vibes. A tighter edit that prioritized the rescue plot over meandering character growth in all probability might have turned “God Is a Bullet” right into a enjoyable airplane film, however Cassavetes’ arthouse ambitions at all times resurface at inopportune instances. There’s positively a marketplace for the type of simple thriller that “God Is a Bullet” appears to wish to be, however there was completely no motive for this story to take two and a half hours.
If it wasn’t clear from the title, a lot of that working time padding is dedicated to nihilistic screeds about how nothing issues. Within the movie’s worldview, organized faith and satanic loss of life cults are simply two sides of the identical coin. They’re each golf equipment that suckers get duped into becoming a member of as a means of deflecting their anxiousness about loss of life and the infinite void that follows.
The one factor that truly has the type of energy that we wish to ascribe to deities is — you guessed it — a bullet. The intention might have been Cormac McCarthy-style poetry, however the script solely delivers heavy-handed preaching that continues to tug us away from what’s left of the story. By the point the inevitable bloody climax arrives, it’s exhausting to care about anybody’s destiny when the movie has spent a lot time attempting to rid us of pure human feelings. Say what you’ll concerning the tenets of formulaic screenwriting, however a minimum of it’s an ethos.
Grade: C-
“God Is a Bullet” opens in theaters nationwide on Friday, June 23.
