Saturday, March 10, 2018

Bullet Head - A Disappointing Supposedly Dog Terror Attack Movie

Yesterday a new movie premiered in only one of the Indonesia cinema chain. I noticed that it was not a brand new (from 2017) and not major Hollywood film, but rather a small budget kind of movie. I was thinking that usually such movie would not play in all the theaters or my favorite ones. But funny thing was it somehow played in Setiabudi which was very near my home. Well let us get on with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Three robbers who just finished robbing some place had to hide in a seemingly abandoned municipal storage facility while waiting for help to move the big safe. The robbers consisted of Stacy (Adrien Brody - The Pianist, The Grand Budapest Hotel etc) who was like their leader, Walker (John Malkovich - Being John Malkovich, In the Line of Fire etc) who was the most experienced one and last but not least Gage (Rory Culkin - Scream 4, Gage etc) the junkie & youngest of them all.

Unbeknownst to them, there was a dog that was used to do illegal dog fights earlier and was left in that warehouse. The dog was trained by the handler (Ori Pfeffer) and would attack on people that it was unfamiliar with. Meanwhile, the dog owner (Antonio Banderas - The Mask of Zorro, Evita etc) was also planning to return to the place on the night.

So could these robbers got out of the warehouse safely from the attack of this wild dog and his owner and also escape from the police? Find them in this crime thriller movie.

End of Brief Story Line

When I read the synopsis of the movie and saw the trailer, it gave the impression that the movie would be filled with the terror attack by the dog on these 3 people while trying to escape from the dog owner as well. But it turned out that the movie was more like a thriller with touches of drama. Movie's duration was 1.5 hour but the terror attack started only after almost an hour. The earlier part was more of introduction of the characters via their own story telling using a backflash mode.

At first the short story telling seemed nice (the one involving John Malkovich's character was quite amazing but sad), then I realized that everyone would have their own share of telling their story. Which made the movie felt losing momentum. Every time the movie started to feel it kept up the pace, then suddenly it slowed down with that story telling. Which made me disappointed with the way the movie was told.

Even when the dog was terrorizing these robbers, it was not so intense as I had expected, since the scenes were not so many. In the end the movie might be good in term of the story and characters development, but since the anticipation was to enjoy a suspenseful movie of a wild animal terror attack a la The Shallows, this movie felt short. However, there were some scenes which I think were quite unique when they were showing the dog's point of view. As for the sound effects, it was pretty good. The dog's roaring voices were very believable. Oh do not expect to see amazing special effects or brutal fight scenes. Some of them were not shown at all and we were only allowed to imagine them from the sounds/voices in background (like flesh and skin ripped off).

Overall, my personal opinion of the movie was that it was unclear the direction the movie was heading. Animal attack terror scenes were too few, while the dramatic moments despite not too bad were taking too much screen time. Perhaps if the movie was having a bit longer duration or having more of those terror scenes, I would be more satisfied. So if you are expecting to see a movie full of those terrorizing scenes or a survival drama movie, you would most likely be disappointed like I was. If you are thinking of seeing the movie in the cinema, better think twice. You might as well watch this through online streaming (Psst, it's already available in the internet). The choice is yours though.

Mike's movie moments rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars


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