It’s a lot of bog-standard action stuff glommed onto a deeper metaphysical muddle; Inception drawn in extra-thick Sharpie and testosterone. If the whole thing is ultimately a shell for Diesel to do what he does, the ending also takes care to sing in the key of sequel too: Come fast cars, Avatars, and farther galaxies, there will be blood, again.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The real issue, though, isn’t that Bloodshot would fail an IQ test. It’s that its dumb fun isn’t executed with panache, smart or otherwise.
The Guardian by Charles Bramesco
Aside from the singular brawn of its leading man, this would-be springboard has nothing much worth launching. It’s a stack of wormed-over action tropes, and to make matters worse, the movie knows it – and yet does not know enough to spare us its missteps in the first place.
Slashfilm by Chris Evangelista
No one will ever accuse Vin Diesel of having range, but he seems particularly lost here. There’s nothing remotely interesting about Ray, before and after he gets his robo-blood.
The movie looks a little like a lost Tony Scott project, but not quite enough — the style isn’t as tactile. Most of its ridiculous conviction comes from Diesel. He’s given plenty of better performances, but here he’s especially convincing in the role of a guy who legitimately believes he has nothing better to do.
The Hollywood Reporter by Justin Lowe
Wilson acquits himself adequately enough, emphasizing pacing over character development, but delivering a series of kinetically propelled scenes that clearly benefit from his extensive visual effects experience.
Hollywood has gotten so good at boiling down comics mythologies that it’s easy to forget how hard it can be to distill a sprawling adventure stretched across decades of stories into two entertaining hours. Bloodshot serves as a painful reminder of that fact.
Bloodshot puts a surprisingly clever spin on the superhero origin story that's fun and funny, but Diesel's performance ultimately leaves it lacking.
Bloodshot is a trash compactor of a comic-book film, but it’s smart trash, an action matrix that’s fun to plug into.
Given its hero’s imperviousness, the film’s chaotically edited action sequences tend to be devoid of suspense.