Bullet Head Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		3.0

Bullet Head Blu-ray Movie Review

Raging (pit) bull.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 11, 2018

Bullet Head is one of those “high concept” affairs where some might wonder just how high writer-director Paul Solet (Grace) was when he came up with it. As my colleague Brian Orndorf perhaps cheekily called it in his review, Bullet Head is part Quentin Tarantino, part Jaws, with a plot that posits three pretty locquacious robbers in a supposedly abandoned warehouse which in fact is not abandoned and which houses a dog that might give Cujo a run for his money. This is perhaps obviously then a rather bizarre hybrid attempt, and how much the film resonates with any particular viewer will probably depend more on the viewer’s tolerance for the disparity of ideas at play in the film than on any inherent “quality” in the film itself. Blatantly theatrical in a way even Tarantino rarely tries, especially with regard to a number of vignettes that serve more or less as explicatory flashbacks, Bullet Head has an interesting cast who do generally excellent work here, but the film’s conceit is so gonzo that it threatens to topple into silliness at several key junctures.

Before the trio of would be master criminals shows up at the abandoned warehouse, Bullet Head actually offers a disturbing point of view sequence which shows the sad world of a mastiff named De Niro (a certain actor is thanked in the closing credits), who is owned by a villainous guy named Blue (Antonio Banderas), who deploys De Niro in dog fighting matches that give this element of the film a none too happy link to Amores Perros. That opening vignette then just kind of segues willy nilly into Stacy (Adrien Brody), Walker (John Malkovich) and Gage (Rory Culkin) crashing their would be getaway car into the warehouse when their driver expires from what one assumes was a bullet delivered to him during a heist gone spectacularly wrong.

It turns out that the attempted robbery has led to this disaster due to Gage’s unquenchable thirst for drugs. The holdup was supposed to be at a big box emporium, but Gage’s detour through the pharmacy resulted in some kind of carnage, and older thieves Walker and (especially) Stacy are none too pleased about it, since the job should have been an easy score. What’s even worse is that Gage is jonesin’ for a fix, something that he begs his ostensible mentors to let him get since he’s beginning to show signs of withdrawal. Unfortunately, Gage (who has a supply of drugs with him) discovers a badly mutilated corpse being watched over by De Niro when Gage goes hunting around the complex for a sink. And thus begins a cat (or more appropriately dog) and mouse game that crops up intermittently between kind of strange vignettes documenting certain aspects of each of the trio’s pasts.

There’s another thanks that the closing credits offers, and it’s to a dog named Molly, which one assumes must have belonged to Solet. There’s also a brief text card mentioning animal abuse and dog fighting and how both are a scourge on modern society, which probably goes without saying, but all of this kind of raises the question as to why exactly Solet wanted to couch a film that he himself seems to be implying is a screed against such horrifying practices within the context of a robbery gone wrong. It’s just a patently odd formulation, and I for one am simply not sure the elements blend together in any overly coherent way.

That said, Solet’s presentational style here is consistently interesting and even often impressive. His camera floats, darts and weaves between all the characters (including De Niro) and provides a kind of perpetuum mobile energy to the proceedings. There are some kind of fun (if, again, blatantly theatrical) aspects to how Solet stages the flashbacks and lets the “contemporary” time intrude (or at least surround) those memories. But the film labors at times with some overly precious dialogue, and a plot that never sufficiently weaves the robbers’ stories with that of poor De Niro. Performances are generally very strong, especially Brody and Malkovich, but Banderas is largely wasted, even in a ridiculous climax that attempts (finally) to join the disparate elements at play in the film into an organic showdown finale.

Bullet Head Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Bullet Head is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.38:1. This is a nicely sharp and well detailed looking presentation, despite the prevalence of pretty shadowy environments in at least some parts of the "abandoned" warehouse. While there's a bit of grading employed here and there, what may strike some viewers more viscerally is the rather distinctive production design with regard to the palette (mentioned in one of the supplements), where warmer tones like yellows are utilized to subliminally evoke "happiness" or "safety", and cooler tones like blues are meant to represent "mistakes" or the kind of quasi-purgatory the three thieves find themselves in. Despite the kind of ping ponging aspect between these two color schemes, detail levels remain commendably consistent, especially when close-ups are employed (which they frequently are). A number of different lenses were utilized to give the film a variety of looks (again, as documented in the commentary track), and the dog POV shots are intentionally softer and fuzzier looking than the bulk of the presentation.

Bullet Head Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Bullet Head's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track delivers consistent surround activity, with a glut of kind of fun "scampering" panning sounds as De Niro hunts his prey. There is also very good use of differing ambiences as the trio moves through various rooms in the warehouse, with a very spacious "echo-y" aspect at times that seems very accurate. The film is very talky a lot of the time, and some of the dialogue scenes tend to deliver sonics pretty exclusively front and center, but there are enough quasi-action interstitials here to keep most audiophiles satisfied. Fidelity is fine throughout this problem free track.

Bullet Head Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Filmmakers' Commentary features writer-director Paul Solet, along with cinematographer and executive producer Zoran Popovic. This has quite a bit of interesting technical information about things like the lenses used and how they achieved the dog POV shots.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 5:14)


• A Canine Point of View: Writing and Directing Bullet Head (1080p; 7:05) is an above average featurette with some good interviews and some interesting information on elements like deliberate palette choices.


• Career Criminals and Fighting Dogs: The Iconic Cast of Bullet Head (1080p; 8:12) features interviews with the "icons".


• Preparation and Performance: The Animals Actors of Bullet Head (1080p; 8:13) is a really interesting piece, though some dog lovers may wince at a couple of the training regimens on display.


• Hymns and Fanfare: The Score of Bullet Head (1080p; 6:17) profiles composer Austin Wintory.


• Bullet Head Proof of Concept (1080p; 3:44) appears to be a short that was perhaps made to market the feature. It has some of the same imagery as the final film, but different performers, and is kind of hallucinatory in its presentational style.

Bullet Head Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Having to sit through so many cookie cutter "entertainments" has made me more tolerant of "iffy" films that at least have the courage to try something a little different, and in that regard Bullet Head succeeds admirably. While it might be tempting to say something along the lines of "you've never seen anything like it," in fact you have — just in two separates genres and separate films, never smushed together in this perhaps less than artful way. This is a really interesting experiment in any case, though I personally think Solet's perceived intention to emphasize animal cruelty would have been better served without all the twee Tarantino-esque exchanges (not to mention the whole trio of thieves angle itself). Fans of the cast may well want to check this out, and for them technical merits are strong.