Sunday, February 3, 2013

It’s Rocky by a knockout in Stallone’s new flick

After glancing at our schedules and realizing college football is really done and over for the year, the lovely Miss Wendy and I were hunting about for something to do. We were both too lazy to head out to the gym and too bored to spend time in front of our TV.

Fortunately, Rocky offered up a fun and amusing way to spend a few hours just a hop, skip and jump away at our neighborhood multiplex.
Sylvester Stallone’s latest flick, “Bullet to the Head”, opened over the weekend and I managed to talk Wendy into joining me in a little mindless fun. That pretty much is the kicker to anything else I might write about this film.
The story – okay, it’s really much too lame to be anything more than a plot outline – has Stallone, a New Orleans hit man, teaming up with a DC cop to bring down a batch of really bad guys. So “Bullet to the Head” – hey, you really gotta love that title, right? – is sort of a buddy flick, mashed up with a police procedural, wrapped together with a fish-out-of-water subplot.
The bottom line, at least for me, is it mostly works because Stallone mostly gets everything right. This time around he’s playing that oh-so strong, silent guy, who, when he talks, says something pretty funny. He can also still throw a punch and, let’s be clear here, there are lots of punches thrown.
There are also lots of fights, shootings, knifings, explosions and one smashing car chase. The really good news is that director Walter Hill does a nice job of making it all come together while tossing in a few surprises along the way.
So, if you have a little free time and are looking for some mindless fun – I did mention that already, right? – there are cosmically worst ways to spend an afternoon.