A ropey, soulless slice of cops and robbers, produced by Robert Rodriguez and starring Danny Trejo. Bullet (Trejo) is a maverick policeman in Los Angeles, the kind of mensch who takes part in cage fights so he can give his single-mum daughter extra cash. A ruthless drugs baron (Jonathan Banks) kidnaps the governor’s daughter — and later Trejo’s grandson — in order to secure the release of his jailed son.
Banks is best known for his part as a gangster in Breaking Bad, and plays virtually the same character, here (which is to say, the missing link between Einstein and one of Tolkien’s Orcs). The film is full of preposterous lines. Our hero tells Julia Dietze’s foreign defence lawyer: “This is America. Speak Mexican, bitch!” Meanwhile, every time we get an establishing shot, the image shudders in an attempt to convey that what’s going down is super-edgy.
As director Nick Lyon has since tried to sue Rodriguez and his creatives for assuming control of the project, it’s hard to know who to blame. Meanwhile, Banks and Trejo prove heartbreakingly committed to making the best of a bad job.
